Master’s Dissertation
A critical discourse analysis on the (self)
representation of Hillary R. Clinton in public
discourse
Student: Wendy Rodríguez Alayo
Supervisor: Dr. Begoña Nuñez Perucha
Date: June 2016
Breve resumen:
El rol de la mujer dentro de la sociedad ha sido y aún es un tema de mucha
controversia. Incluso en nuestra sociedad, se suscitan debates sobre si les está permitido
a las mujeres ocupar ciertos ámbitos laborales que han estado siempre dominados por una
fuerte presencia masculina, como es el caso del ámbito político. Además, en muchos
países aún ni siquiera están reconocidos los derechos de las mujeres, y mientras que, en
otras culturas, a pesar de que la ley vela por los derechos humanos sin importar la raza, la
religión o el género, la realidad es que incluso en las culturas más desarrolladas existe
desigualdad de género y estereotipos que afectan el desenvolvimiento de la mujer. Sin
embargo, a pesar de que aun la desigualdad de género está presente en la sociedad, es
innegable que la situación actual es mucho más positiva para la implicación de las mujeres
incluso dentro de ámbitos de la sociedad, que décadas atrás sería impensable, como la
política. En esta línea, toda esta situación ha suscitado el interés de muchos investigadores
y lingüistas, que han dedicado tiempo a investigaciones sobre las relaciones entre discurso
y género, y sobre la representación mediática de mujeres que tienen cierta influencia en
el ámbito público, y cómo la desigualdad de género afecta su imagen pública.
Si bien es cierto, durante mucho tiempo el ámbito de la política ha estado
dominado por presencia masculina, ahora la situación ha cambiado. En las últimas
décadas, se ha hecho evidente una gran presencia de mujeres dentro de la política, mujeres
que a comparación de la situación vivida décadas atrás, ahora tienen la posibilidad de
presentarse incluso como candidatas a la presidencia, como es el caso de Hillary Clinton.
En este sentido muchas corrientes feministas han contribuido en gran medida a esta nueva
situación.
1
Ahora bien, en vista de toda esta situación, el presente estudio de investigación
intentará dar respuesta a las siguientes preguntas. ¿Hasta qué punto los estereotipos de
género están aún presentes en la sociedad? ¿La representación mediática de una figura
política está realmente basada en su conducta y en su actividad discursiva, o está influida
por esquemas e ideas preconcebidas de género? Teniendo en cuenta que hoy en día hay
una mayor presencia femenina dentro del ámbito político, una de mis hipótesis iniciales
es que la situación de los estereotipos de género ha disminuido. Además, se espera que la
forma en la que Hillary Clinton se representa a sí misma como una mujer y como una
política esté menos perjudicada por estos esquemas.
El objetivo de este estudio es, primeramente, llevar a cabo un análisis sobre diez
discursos de Hillary Clinton, desde el 15 de junio de 2015, fecha en la que Hillary Clinton
lanzo su candidatura a la presidencia, hasta el 26 de abril de 2016, para a través de este
análisis poder identificar como Hillary Clinton se caracteriza a sí misma en sus discursos
políticos, y asimismo identificar si los esquemas convencionales sobre género afectan su
auto representación. Con este objetivo, el enfoque de este estudio se va a centrar en
análisis cuantitativos y cualitativos sobre la frecuencia de palabras, seguido de un análisis
crítico del discurso sobre la auto representación de Hillary en sus discursos. Además,
siguiendo la línea de investigación de Tannen (1996), se realizará un análisis sobre los
usos de los pronombres “nosotros” y “yo”, para adquirir una mayor perspectiva sobre esta
situación.
Seguidamente, teniendo en cuenta que los medios de comunicación reflejan
ideologías sociales, este estudio ha sido también diseñado para analizar diez artículos de
noticias sobre los discursos previamente analizados de Hillary Clinton. De esta manera,
se examinará si los estereotipos de género están presentes en la representación mediática
de Hillary Clinton, para seguidamente analizar si la interpretación mediática de la
2
candidata a la presidencia está realmente relacionada con los discursos analizados o, si
por lo contrario están influidos por estereotipos y esquemas de género. Para cumplir con
este objetivo, los datos recopilados para este corpus consisten en exactamente diez
artículos que reporten sobre los discursos estudiados en el primer análisis, y la actuación
de Hillary Clinton. Estos artículos fueron recogidos de cuatro de los periódicos más
importantes de los Estados Unidos, que son New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los
Angeles times y The Washington Post. En este caso el análisis estará centrado en la
frecuencia de palabras y en el uso de reporting verbs, siguiendo la línea de investigación
de Caldas – Coulthard (1995).
Se espera que el presente estudio pueda servir para mayores investigaciones sobre
cuestiones de género, y de esta manera contribuir a la creación de teorías que puedan
explicar mejor la situación de las mujeres dentro de la política. Para finalizar, aún queda
mucho que investigar en esta disciplina, e incluso más por descubrir.
3
Contents
1. INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................6
2. METHOD SECTION ..................................................................................................11
2.1. Data collection and description ............................................................................11
2.2. The Politician: Hillary Clinton’s background ......................................................15
2.3. Brief description of the Newspapers ....................................................................16
3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND SECTION ..........................................................21
3.1. Critical Discourse Analysis ..................................................................................21
3.1.1. A feminist approach ......................................................................................26
3.2. Media Discourse on female politicians ................................................................ 28
3.3. Sociolinguistic approach on gender .....................................................................30
3.3.1. Gender schemas and stereotypes ..................................................................34
3.3.2. Gender identity and stereotypes ...................................................................35
3.4. Contextualization .................................................................................................38
3.4.1. Situation of women in today’s society .........................................................38
3.5. Introduction to corpus linguistics .........................................................................41
3.5.1. The use of Corpus Linguistics as a tool for text analysis .............................. 43
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .................................................................................44
4.1. Analysis on Hillary Clinton’s speeches ............................................................... 44
4.1.1. Word frequency and comparison as a source for self-characterization ........44
4.1.2. Pronoun choice: The uses of the pronoun “we” ............................................52
4.2. Media representation of Hillary Clinton .............................................................. 57
4.2.1.
Word frequency and comparison as a tool for media representation .........57
4.2.2. The choice of reporting verbs .......................................................................63
5. CONCLUSION ...........................................................................................................69
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................75
7. APPENDIXES ............................................................................................................80
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my parents Jacqueline and Omar, and my siblings Jeyson and Isaac
for all their love and support, and to my family and friends who have always believed in
me and encouraged me every step of the way. I also want to thank my supervisor Dr.
Begoña Nuñez Perucha for her great effort and dedication, without her help this master’s
dissertation would not be the same. And above all, I thank God with all my heart and soul
for everything I have and everything I am. For he has always been a refuge for my heart
and has always remained faithful. Für immer und ewig.
Better things are yet to come…
5
1. INTRODUCTION
The situation of women and the roles they play within society have been and still
are issues that arise many controversies. Even in the 21st Century, people still debate on
whether it is permitted for women to occupy traditionally male dominated areas, such as
politics, or any other public positions, especially in some cultures, where still women do
not have practically any kind of rights, and, thus, they do not have any chance to go
beyond the private sphere.
Fortunately, this precarious situation is by far quite different from the situation in
other American and European cultures, in which the situation of women within society
follows a different path. Their presence in the social and political sphere has come a long
way throughout history and women have experienced many important changes and
positive achievements. Certainly, since the initial feminist movements and their fight for
gender equality, it was made possible for women to achieve the recognition of women’s
rights, one of them being the recognition of women’s suffrage1.
However, despite the fact that the current situation for women has improved
enormously in comparison with the social context from decades ago, and that in today’s
society there are laws that guarantee the well-being of every citizen despite gender, status,
belief, or any other factor; it cannot be denied that women are in many situations still
considered as subordinate and inferior to their male counterparts. This whole situation has
attracted the interest of many researchers, who have devoted their time to analyze the role
of women within society and how gender inequalities influence their public image. There
The first time women’s suffrage was legislated was on August 26, 1920; after a long time of
fight and parade carried out by the supporters of the rights of women to vote and to be represented in the
political life. The Nineteenth Amendment states that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."
1
6
is a fairly long tradition on studies regarding the position of women within society from
a variety of perspectives and disciplines, as it has gradually become a matter of main
interest (see Spence & Helmreich 1978, Gherardi 1995, Khan 1996, Norris 1997, Puwar
1997, Buddhapriya 1999, Valian 1999, Eckert & McConell-Ginet 1999, Garcia-Retamero
& López-Zafra 2006, Pappalardo 2007, Markstedt 2007, Poggio 2010, Gelber 2011).
Politics has been for a long time male-dominated. However, over the last decades,
it has become evident that the amount of female representatives in the political sphere has
shown an important growth. What is more, a female runner for president, Hillary Clinton,
is close to make history by becoming the first female president of the United States, if she
wins the elections that will take place in November 2016. And this is also the case of
many other women who have lately been occupying positions that require a great deal of
power management and social presence, such as the case of Margaret Thatcher or Angela
Merkel. Unfortunately, as a consequence of this accelerated increase of female presence
in traditionally male dominated spheres, the stereotypical conventions regarding the
“female” behavior and subordinate position women are supposed to have according to the
social gendered categorizations, are still present in today’s society. In this sense, many
studies have focused on the role of female politicians in comparison with the role of male
politicians, specifically since 20082, which was one of the most outstanding years in the
history of the U.S.A political life, having Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as the
decisive candidates for presidency. The central issue of these studies (Caldas-Coulthard
1995, Khan 1996, Norris 1997, Chang & Hitchon 1997, Valian 1999, Pappalardo 2007,
Markstedt 2007, Hall & Dunn 2008, Gelber 2011, Zimbabwe 2012) has been mainly
2
The year 2008 was devoted to be historical, as either of the both candidates to the presidency,
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, would have achieved an unprecedented event in the political history of
the United States, Obama for being the first black representative in the position of president of the whole
nation, and Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, becoming the first woman to win the presidential elections
in the United States.
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conducted in the fields of media representation and political discourse analysis. On the
one hand, as far as discourse analysis is concerned, according to Walsh “a number of
approaches to CDA, including that of Fairclough, marginalize the importance of
specifically gendered identities and relations and the social inequalities to which these
contribute” (2001:27). That is to say that even though much research has been devoted to
the analysis of political discourse, there is still a need for critical discourse studies from a
feminist perspective, especially in order to understand and analyze discourse focusing on
gender issues and the characterization of women (but see Nuñez Perucha, 2011), which is
one of the main reasons why the present study is going to focus on this issue in the
following pages. On the other hand, regarding media representation and its relation to the
spread of gender stereotypes, it is a common finding that the media tends to emphasize
the unequal treatment of women, who are suppressed in many ways by these gender
stereotypes, by being represented in terms of their appearance, clothing, and their interest
for what is addressed as characteristically “female” interests, such as family and
household issues (Caldas-Coulthard 1995, Khan 1996, Norris 1997, Chang & Hitchon
1997, Markstedt 2007, Pappalardo 2007, Hall and Dunn 2008). The media has a huge
impact on society, as it reflects the social ideology underlying many issues, such as social
class, gender, and many other social conventions. Up to date, the conclusion of previous
research conducted in the field of gender differentiation in the political sphere, has been
that media emphasizes the unequal gender treatment and consequently this is regarded as
a situation that “could undermine their (women’s) possibility to challenge and to change
the prevailing masculinist culture.” (Pappalardo 2007:3). Apparently, even though
nowadays women have a major presence in the political sphere as compared to that in the
past, gender schemas seem to affect the public characterization of female politicians in a
8
negative way, and, subsequently, this may have negative influence on their selfcharacterization.
In spite of all the situation, the present social context we live in provides more
opportunities for women to live in a more equalitarian society that lets them develop their
aptitudes and capacities beyond the private sphere, in comparison to previous times.
Specifically, feminism and its fight for gender equality have played an important role.
Then, this situation raises the following questions: To what extent are gender stereotypes
still present within society? Are the representations of female politicians in the media
related to how they characterize themselves in their self-characterization portrayed in their
political speeches or are they biased through gender schemas and stereotypes? For this
purpose, the focus of research will be centered on the situation of Hillary Clinton, since
she is nowadays an active candidate who has launched her candidacy for the presidency
of the United States. Taking into account that nowadays there is much more female
representation in the political sphere, one of my hypotheses is that the situation of gender
stereotypes in media representation has diminished, and also, this positive situation is
reflected in the way a female politician, specifically Hillary Clinton, represents herself
through her discourse.
The aim of this paper is firstly, to conduct an analysis on ten different speeches of
Hillary Clinton, dating from the campaign launching event in June 15th 2015 to 26th April
2016, in order to analyze how she characterizes herself as a woman and as a politician,
and to see whether she represents herself through gender schemas or as subordinate to her
male counterparts. And secondly, taking into account that media is a reflection of many
social ideologies, this study has been designed to analyze the articles reporting about the
same performance and speeches of Hillary Clinton, analyzed in the first part, in order to
examine if stereotypes are still present in the female politician’s media representation, and
9
to analyze the relationship between the self-characterization of the female politician and
the representation of her in the media discourse. For this purpose, the data compiled for
this corpus consists on some articles reporting on the speeches and the performance of
Hillary previously analyzed, from four different newspapers, in order to provide results
from a few different perspectives.
The analyses reported here show that in general terms, there has been an increase
in the positive evaluation of the representation of female politicians in the media in
comparison to the results obtained from previous research. And that as far as the
relationship between media discourse and political speeches of Hillary Clinton is
concerned, the media representation corresponds to a higher extent to the selfcharacterization of Hillary, since in both instances, she is characterized as “experienced”
and “better prepared” for occupying the seat of the presidency. Furthermore, in many
instances her self-description is also quoted in the media. However, despite the fact that
the present social situation has changed favorably for women compared to former times
and that nowadays there is much more freedom for women to occupy more powerful
positions within society, and being less likely to be regarded through gender schemas.
Still in many cases female politicians are found to be related to their male counterparts in
terms of being subordinate and less competitive than them, even though both are at the
same position or occupying the same place at work, being characterized in the media as
“evil”, “lacking passion” and “incompetent” (Kahn 1996, Pappalardo 2007, Markstedt
2007, Hall & Dunn 2008). The analysis conducted in the present research seems to
foreground a new situation regarding characterization of female politicians, since there
seems to be an increase on positive evaluation in the media compared to what has been
found in previous results. Besides, the fact that less research has been conducted in
10
comparing the situation regarding the self-characterization of a politician through her own
political discourses and their representation in the media (but see Markstedt 2007).
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: First, the method section
focuses on the steps taken for the data collection, the reasons behind the chosen
newspapers and a brief background description of the ideology behind the selected
newspapers and the politician that is going to be analyzed. Secondly, in the theoretical
background section, there is a review on some research conducted in the field of media
representation on female politicians and issues on critical discourse analysis (CDA),
identity, gender schemas and stereotypes. After that, in section 4, there is an analysis of
the results and the discussion of the findings carried out. Finally, the main and most
striking findings are reviewed in the conclusion part, as well as some ideas and
suggestions for further research.
2. METHOD SECTION
2.1. Data collection and description
The present study is based on two analyses. The first one, focuses on the speeches
of Hillary Clinton, and aims to examine the self-characterization of Hillary as a woman
and as a politician. In this line, the second analysis will be focused on the investigation of
media representation of the same politician’s performance, in order to subsequently
analyze whether there is a relation between the self-characterization and the
representation of Hillary in the media, and identify whether media representation is based
on the speeches or whether it follows gendered schemas and patterns. For both purposes,
Wordsmith Tools was employed, as well as a critical discourse analysis from a feminist
approach, since it is important to combine feminism and CDA in order to understand
gender inequality in discourse and context.
11
First, a quantitative analysis was conducted on the word frequency by setting a
Wordlist. In this case, I only focused on the most frequent content words that could serve
as a basis for the interpretation of the self-characterization of Hillary. Then, a qualitative
analysis was conducted on extended pieces of text where these key words appeared, in
order to evaluate how these words are employed by the politician to characterize herself.
And lastly, following the line of research of Walsh (2001) further analysis was conducted
on the pronoun choice, as a tool for understanding the self-positioning of Hillary Clinton
in her speeches. For this purpose, I compiled a total of 10 transcripts of different speeches
of Hillary Clinton, dating from June 13th 20153 to April 27th 2016. The sample in total is
comprised of the total amount of 26,203 words. Some speeches of Hillary Clinton from
the actual campaign she is running were selected, with the launching event of her
candidacy to the presidency, being the starting reference point. All the speeches cover a
wide diversity of different topics, making it interesting to carry out an analysis on the
different positions she takes on different issues, and how she represents herself in each
one of them, which makes possible the accomplishment of one of the basic objectives of
the present research, which is related to the self-characterization of the politician.
Speeches
Date
Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Launch Speech
13.06.2015
Hillary Clinton Lays Out Comprehensive Plan To Bolster Homeland 15.12.2015
Security
Hillary Clinton’s Nevada caucuses victory speech
20.02.2016
Hillary Clinton's South Carolina speech
28.02.2016
3
On 13th June 2015 Hillary Clinton launched her campaign for the presidency in the coming
elections arranged for the of 8th November 2016.
12
Hillary Clinton’s Super Tuesday Victory Speech
01.03.2016
Hillary Clinton’s Pennsylvania Primary Speech
15.03.2016
Hillary Clinton’s Speech to AIPAC
21.03.2016
Hillary Clinton Delivers Remarks at National Action Network
13.04.2016
Hillary Clinton’s New York primary victory speech
20.04.2016
Hillary Clinton's post-primary speech in Philadelphia
26.04.2016
Table 1. List of the speeches delivered by Hillary Clinton from 13th June 2015 to 26th
April 2016
Secondly, a quantitative analysis was conducted on a total number of 10 news
articles from the same lapse of time as the speeches, dating from 13th June 2015 to 26th
April 2016some articles published in four different Newspapers, in order to evaluate how
American public media addresses Hillary Clinton’s political participation nowadays and
whether this could have a negative impact on the public image of the politician, taking
into account that media serves as a reflection of social ideologies and has also a great
influence over the society. For this stage, I decided to gather the news articles from The
New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times.
These specific Newspapers were chosen because they are considered the most prestigious
journals in America, and since the electoral campaign takes place in the United States,
they were expected to provide a more accurate representation and criticism over what is
happening within the political life of The United States and provide a more national
perspective and representation on Hillary Clinton. For this purpose, these articles were
specifically chosen considering the fact that they report on the speeches analyzed, and,
thus, they are relevant for the further comparison of the self-characterization with the
media representation of the politician. In this case, a quantitative analysis was conducted
regarding the most frequent words used in the articles. For this first part of the analysis,
13
I focused on the content words such as Adjectives, Verbs and Substantives. And
subsequently, a qualitative analysis was conducted to ascertain on the uses of these words,
in order to evaluate how these are employed to represent the public image of Hillary
Clinton in the Media. In addition, and following the line of research of Caldas-Coulthard
(1995) and Gidengil (2000), I will focus on the use of reporting verbs, in order to examine
whether the choice of certain reporting verbs adds negative or positive connotations to the
reported speech of Hillary, and so, use these results as complementary to the ones
obtained from the qualitative analysis.
Headlines
Newspaper
Date
Hillary Clinton, in Roosevelt Island
Speech, Pledges to Close Income Gap
The
New
Times
York 13. 06. 2015
Clinton seeks stark contrast with GOP on
terrorism and national security
The Washington
Post
15.12.2015
Hillary Clinton deserves a massive amount
of credit for winning Nevada
The Washington
Post
20.02.2016
Hillary Clinton easily defeats Bernie
Sanders in South Carolina primary
The Washington
Post
28.02.2016
Clinton's Southern sweep gives her
commanding lead; Sanders vows to
continue
Los Angeles Times
02. 03. 2016
Hillary Clinton Wins 4 Races, Rebounding
from Michigan Loss
The
New
Times
Hillary Clinton challenges Donald Trump
over 'dangerously wrong' views on Israel
Los Angeles Times
What Needs to Come After the New York
Primary
The
New
Times
Hillary Clinton Wins New York’s
Democratic Primary
Wall Street Journal
York 15. 03.2016
21. 03. 2016
York 15.04. 2016
20. 04. 2016
14
Hillary Clinton Wins Four States, Bernie
Sanders Takes One
Wall Street Journal
26.04.2016
Table 2. List of the articles written on Hillary Clinton from 13th June 2015 to 26th
April 2016, in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and
Los Angeles Times.
2.2. The Politician: Hillary Clinton’s background
Hillary Rodham Clinton was born in October 1947, is now 68 years old. She was
brought up in a middle class family. During her college times she was an activist, and was
interested in social justice since her early years. She enrolled in Yale Law school, after
she graduated she dedicated her life to help children students with disabilities and
families. Since her early years she was devoted to become part of the minority of women
that had an active role within society. As it can be seen in the Graphic 1, the figures for
the total of women employed as Lawyers in 1985 was considerably lower than the
percentage obtained in 2000 and 2012. Nonetheless, despite this negative situation for
women in the labor market, Hillary Clinton managed to be part of that minority,
establishing a new path for women within politics.
She married and started her own family in 1975, and later on she became the first
lady of the United States when her husband Bill Clinton was elected as the president in
the elections of 1992. Since then, she has had an active career in the political life and still
remains active until today. In 2000 she was elected as senator of New York, becoming
the only first lady of The United States who sought elective office ever.
In 2008 she launched her candidature and became runner for the presidency,
during the election process she became the female candidate with the most delegates won
than any other previous female candidate. However, she lost the presidency to Barack
15
Obama. After that in 2009 president Obama encouraged her to be the secretary of state, a
position she accepted and occupied until 2013.
Nowadays, she is running for presidency in the upcoming elections on 8th
November 2016. She launched her campaign for the first time in June 13th 2015, which is
established as the starting point of the data gathered for the present research. If she gets
elected, she would become the first woman president in the history of the United States.
Formerly in 2008, she gained much popularity, as it was the first time that women in
politics took the center stage in the presidential elections in the political history of the
U.S.A. Even though she was not the first female candidate to run for presidency, she was
the first one to have a higher chance of being chosen as the president, as in the primary
season, she ran against the actual President Barack Obama, and was eventually defeated
by him. In a similar way, Hillary Clinton is now the only woman in the Democrat
nomination that is running for the presidency, and is also once again as in the campaign
of 2008, one of the strongest candidates with one of the highest chances to be elected as
the next president in the upcoming elections.
With all her experience and the long time she has been active in the political life,
she can prove to be at the same level of capacity as many of the candidates who, at the
moment, are running for president. With this, it seems to be that she is competent enough
to take the responsibility of the presidential seat, and to fulfill the duties and
responsibilities she will have to care about as the president.
2.3. Brief description of the Newspapers
The New York Times is considered as one of the best daily newspapers par
excellence. It was founded in 1851. In 1975 there were some controversies around it,
when the Pentagon Papers, a series of secret papers from the United States Department of
16
Defense which showed the political and military involvement of the country in the
Vietnam War, started to be leaked by the newspaper. The New York Times started to
release the papers as a series of articles in 13th June. Finally, after much controversy and
lawsuits, the fight came to a closure. The New York Times was victorious and The First
Amendment was accomplished, which secures the right of freedom of religion, speech
and press. So they continued on publishing the confidential information they had in their
hands. Although, the result of all the lawsuits and court cases had been positive for the
press, this issue was still seen from the public opinion as a dangerous situation for the
freedom of speech.
However, this was not the only controversial issue surrounding the history of the
New York Times. In addition, in year 1935, the enterprise faced some accusations
regarding gender discrimination. They were accused of discriminatory behavior towards
some women employees by preventing them from occupying a position in editorials.
Lately, in a recent study conducted by The News Guild4, it was shown that women are
paid 7% less than men, and that “women make up less than half the force at NYT” (The
News Guild 2016), in other words, according to the statistics, The New York Times
(NYT) employs more men than women. Besides, there is an over-representation of female
presence in low-paid jobs; while the high-paid jobs such as critic, domestic correspondent,
reporter, art director, graphics/multimedia editor, and photographer, are mostly male
dominated. Likewise, it means that women are usually paid less than men, revealing a
serious issue of concern, that there is no a gender equality in salary payment.
Lastly, the content published by NYT is available all over the world in a series of
different formats, such as printed version, online format, mobile format and even a version
4
Pay lags for minorities, women at The Times, Guild study finds. Available at:
http://www.nyguild.org/tl_files/nyguild/documents/NYTimes/Timespaygap160512.pdf
17
in Chinese. Nowadays, with globalization, it is possible that all the published content the
NYT releases can be accessed by everybody all over the world, making possible the
spread of all the ideologies, opinions and critics. In addition, the NYT is associated with
and supports the webpage of “Women in the world”5, an online newspaper that releases
news regarding women all over the world. Therefore, this newspaper is suitable for an
analysis on women’s media representation as it is one of the most influential media
resources that nowadays exists.
Regarding Los Angeles Times (LAT), it was founded in 1881. Initially its pages
were directed to a Republican public, since during those times newspapers where directed
by political parties. Then, it seems to be that the reason why it was possible to only find
four articles from the editorial section addressing Hillary Clinton, is due to its Republican
origin, while in the other Newspapers many more articles were found.
In addition, on the official webpage of the newspaper it can be observed that there
is only one woman in the executive team in the position of Executive vice president and
general counsel. This could serve as an example of what some statistics show, and as well
as in the case of the NYT, that at present times women still have a subordinate role, while
most of the jobs, even in the media, are still male dominated.
In addition, along its history, diverse problems and controversies led to the LAT
to be close to be declared in bankrupt in many times, affecting negatively the position of
the newspaper. In 2006 an Op-ed from a neoconservative columnist was released in LAT
with the title of “Bomb Iran”6. Around 2003, when a governor was accused of harassing
women, the newspaper decided not to publish this incident, since, according to them, the
sources of that piece of news were anonymous and thus they were considered as unworthy
5
http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/
This piece of news published in Los Angeles Times is still available online in its official
webpage. Available at: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-op-muravchik19nov19-story.html
6
18
of being published. As a result, the public opinion showed a stance against the newspaper
and the percentage of the followers and readers of the LAT decreased a lot.
On the other hand, The Washington Post (TWP) is considered alongside Los
Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, one of the most
prestigious newspapers. It was founded in 1877, having a long and respected history until
now. Though, like the other previously mentioned newspapers it has also been surrounded
by many controversies. As was the case of NYT, TWP was also implicated in the case of
the leaked information about the secret papers from the United States Department of
Defense which showed the political and military involvement of the country in the
Vietnam War.
Regarding its political stance, around the year 1970, when newspapers were
politically much more oriented than now, TWP was oriented towards the left-wing. Since
2000 it has showed its support for the Republican political parties, showing its full support
for Obama in the elections of 2008. However, in the present elections it has been accused
of being biased against the democrat Bernie Sanders, who is one of the candidates that is
fighting hand in hand with Hillary Clinton for the presidency in the upcoming elections
that will take place on November of the present year. Therefore, due to all these diverse
political positions that TWP has had throughout the years, it becomes a viable tool for
understanding the media representation of Hillary Clinton, a democrat candidate, from a
more different perspective.
Finally, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) was founded in 1889. It includes two
different editions, the Asian and the European editions, expanding its perimeter of range,
and making its news accessible to a wider audience. Regarding its political orientation, it
is, generally speaking, oriented towards a more conservative political stance. In 2009 an
article published in the NYT criticized the newspaper for being influenced by the personal
19
opinions and political stance of its director, and accused WSJ of editing its content to be
in favor of the latter’s conservative position. In addition, it has been shown that the
newspaper adopted a critical position regarding the performance of Barack Obama during
his presidential times (Wagner et Al., 2014). Moreover, according to Vetter (2006) the
members of the editorial board of the WSJ have shown their conservative political stance
in many occasions. This situation makes possible to have a wider perspective on the
representation of women, specifically Hillary Clinton, in the media.
As for some other important issues regarding the political stances and ideologies
of the WSJ, it could be interesting to mention that regarding the issue of immigration, the
WSJ has been a great supporter of immigrants. Besides, as well as the two other remaining
newspapers, some controversies have surrounded the history of the newspaper, when in
2013 the Chinese edition of the WSJ was blocked in China by the government after they
had released an article talking about Chinese sensitive issues (Bischoff, 2013). However,
later on in the beginning of the next year, it was finally unblocked.
Newspaper
Ideological slant
Los Angeles Times
Republican origin
New York Times
Liberal.
Accusations on gender discrimination.
The Washington Post
1970 Left-wing orientation.
2000 republican.
Accused for being biased towards Bernie
Sanders in 2015.
Wall Street Journal
Conservative political stance. Critical
on Barack Obama during his
presidential time.
Table 3. Relation of the Newspapers and their ideological slant.
20
3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND SECTION
3.1. Critical Discourse Analysis
First, it is important to define what is discourse. According to Fairclough (1995b:
56) “A discourse is the language used in representing a given social practice from a
particular point of view”. That is to say, any form of discourse is actually a reflection of
mental interpretations of the world. Therefore, it would be an erroneous methodology to
just try to analyze discourse through a superficial analysis that focuses only on the formal
aspects of the language employed within the process of the speech construction. In this
line, according to Van Dijk, CDA “is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily
studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced,
and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context” (2001: 352). Thus, CDA
becomes a highly recommended tool for discourse analysis, since it deals with formal
aspects of the language within a specific social context. According to Van Dijk “context
is defined as the mentally represented structure of those properties of the social situation
that are relevant for the production or comprehension of discourse” (2001: 356). For this
reason, the present study will be focused on conducting CDA in order to understand the
underlying social situation behind the discourses analyzed and the media representation,
regarding political and social conventions, such as the formulation of gender inequality,
self-characterization and power relations, as well as the factors that influence the
production of discourse.
There is a fairly long tradition of the use of CDA for the analysis of discourse and
gender issues. However, in general terms, there seems to be a lack of research concerning
women’s characterization in their own speeches in comparison with the evaluation
represented of them in the media (but see Markstedt 2007).
21
Some of the research conducted on gender and CDA has revealed that the social
gender categorizations have affected women for a long time, in the sense that women
attempt “to counteract” this negative situation by accommodating their speech in order to
fit into the traditionally “masculine” expected behavior in politics (McElhinny 1995).
Since politics has been for a long time male dominated, the standard behavior of an ideal
politician is not conventionally connected to women. In relation to this, it has been also
found that women running for elected office tend to emphasize masculine traits such as
“assertiveness” and “competence” through “adopting strong stances on political issues or
highlighting their toughness” (Gidengil 2000), and that women tend to rely on
“masculine” traits to portray a more powerful image in their political campaigns (Khan
1996).
On the other hand, regarding discourse and media representation research,
Pappalardo (2007) carried out an analysis on how female and male politicians occupying
the same political office are regarded in the media. She focuses on the candidates for
presidency, Mr. Sarkozy and Ms. Royal, in the elections that took place in 2007 in France.
One of the focuses of her study is concerned with the analysis of different ways in which
reporting verbs reflect the character of the person that is being referred to in the articles,
and how the choice of certain reporting verbs tends to highlight the verbal violence of the
female candidate. She found that gender stereotypes still existed, but they were not as
strong as they used to be before, and that some differences regarding the treatment of men
and women were found. Ms. Royal was portrayed generally as “impassionate” and “not
always in control of the situation”. On the other hand, Mr. Sarkozy was mostly appreciated
for his “strength and eloquence” (Pappalardo 2007: 43-44).
As far as the use of reporting verbs as a tool for CDA is concerned, according to
Caldas-Coulthard (1995), it is an important source for the interpretation of media
22
representation of politicians, as it is a way of understanding the text producers’ stance on
a specific individual. In other words, the analysis on reporting verbs enables people to
understand how the speeches and performances of politicians are understood and how
they are portrayed. In this case, an analysis on reporting verbs in media coverage
facilitates the mainstream media interpretation of a certain individual. In this line, many
research has been conducted in this field as a tool for the characterization of female
politicians. For instance, in the research conducted by Caldas-Coulthard (1995), regarding
the “Misinterpretation of women in the news-as-narrative discourse”, some of the results
showed that women tend to be reported through verbs such as “scream” and “yell”, while
men are portrayed through verbs such as “shout”. In this line, Gidengil (2000) conducted
a study on “gender and reported speech in campaign news coverage”. She conducted an
analysis on the reported speech in news coverage on the 1993 elections in Canada. For
this purpose, she set the following list and sorted out reporting verbs regarding their
degree of positive and negative affection.
Table 4. Affectively-Laden Speech Verbs. List provided by Gidengil (2000)
23
The results from this research showed that the speech of the two female candidates
in question was portrayed in the media in more “negative” and “aggressive” language.
Moreover, Geis (2007), suggests that reporting verbs such as “blame”, “attack”, and
“taunt” tend to have strongly negative connotations, and thus, lead the producer of the
speech to be interpreted negatively, while on the other hand verbs like “assure”,
“endorse”, and “reaffirm” can have the opposite effect. In general terms, these results
prove the great importance of reporting verbs in the media, as they are a basic feature that
influences on the interpretation of the female politician described, and thus, by the wrong
choice of the reporting verbs, this could “hinder women’s chances of electoral success”
(Gidengil 2000). Therefore, following the model of previous research, I have decided to
focus also on reporting verbs in order to analyze the position of the media regarding the
figure of Hilary Clinton. The gender characterization found in previous research in the
media predicts that the speech of female candidates will also be reported in a more
negative way in the present analysis. a more negative way in the present analysis.
In addition to these results, in the research carried out by Walsh (2001), she finds
out that usually in the media representation of women, collocations tend to diminish the
image of women, as in the case of “Blair’s babes” (2001: 43), in which the collocation
“babes” referring to a group of female politicians from the Labor Party, was used as a
collocation to Tony Blair, a male politician. As a consequence, this shifted the attention
from the role of women as politicians to the identification of them as “babes” of a male
politician, making it difficult to take the role of those women seriously.
Some other important results in the research conducted in this area are that,
according to Walsh (2001), the pronoun “we” is “implicitly gendered as male” (50). That
is to say that when “we” is used, socially speaking, the conventional gender schema that
is behind that word tends to have a male connotation, and, thus, identifying women as part
24
of the “out-group”. A similar situation happens with the pronoun “he” in its generic form,
when it is used to refer to a person whose gender is unknown. In addition, one of the
findings of Caldas-Coulthard regarding the use of reporting verbs, revealed that women
are usually portrayed as people who “scream” and “yell”, while the verb used for men
when they do the same action, tends to be “shout” (1995: 235).
In general terms, critical linguistics (CDA) emphasizes the role of lexis in the
process of categorization. In a study on gender discrimination, such as the present
research, it must be considered how differences in the vocabulary create or reinforce
gender categories. In other words, what is important in CDA regarding gender inequality,
is how the fact that women are represented as “mothers” and “wives”, and syntactic
aspects as whether they appear as “agents” in the texts or just as “passive Subjects” of the
sentences (Fairclough 1995a). In view of all these issues, in the present research I am
going to focus on different aspects of the language. First, regarding the analysis of the
political speeches, I am going to use CDA for the interpretation of the self-representation
of Hillary Clinton to see how she characterizes herself as a woman and as a politician.
Moreover, following the line of research of Tannen (1996), I will focus also on the
pronoun choices, specifically on the uses of the pronouns “I” and “we”, in order to see to
what extent she identifies her own triumphs or commitments as belonging to herself or if
she tends to share her actions with others. The second analysis will be focused also on the
use of CDA of the most frequent content words focusing on the evaluation and political
figures that are related to her in the media and the reason behind this relationship, in order
to identify the gendered power relations established in media discourse. Subsequently, an
analysis of reporting verbs (Caldas-Coulthard 1995) will be conducted, in order to
examine the connotations they hold in relation to the characterization of Hillary, and
eventually see how media representation characterizes the female politician in question
25
and to what extent this evaluation is defined by the speeches delivered by the same
politician.
3.1.1. A feminist approach
Feminism is a movement that fights for the rights of women and for the
achievement of gender equality within every society. Thus, feminists take the
responsibility for diminishing the socially widespread misleading and stereotyped
definitions of gender. In other words, Feminism aims to achieve gender equality trough
the elimination of gender categories that establish the “male” and “female” expected
behaviors for men and women.
These conceptions of gender as socially structured groups have led to the
discrimination of those who do not comply exactly with all the female and male structured
conventions. And this situation is nothing else than an erroneous way of understanding
identity and behavioral patterns, taking into account that gender is just one of the many
other variables that construct one individual’s identity. But, why is it important to acquire
a feminist approach to all these already well established disciplines? Well, there is a fairly
long tradition of the feminist studies present within many other disciplines, such as
feminist pragmatics or feminist psychology, in the duty of challenging the patriarchal and
gendered social power relations. In addition, according to Grant (1993), by adopting a
feminist perspective on CDA it means that one has a critical distance on gender in a
society, in which the social relationships are not determined by gender. Then, when a
feminist CDA is applied, what matters is an objective and critical analysis, without
appealing to the personal gender schemas of the analyzer, in order to avoid being biased
towards one’s personal gendered social conventionalisms, since feminism looks for
equality of gender, and not for the establishment of the superiority of women over men.
26
On the other hand, CDA is mainly used for the critical analysis of discourse, which
is a reflection of the mental categorizations and interpretations of the social and political
context that the same discourse produces. With a critical discourse analysis, it is possible
to study power relations and social orders found within discourse. Therefore, through a
feminist approach to CDA it is possible not only to challenge the inequalities that are
present in society, but also to “advance a rich and nuanced understanding of the complex
workings of power and ideology in discourse in sustaining (hierarchically) gendered
social arrangements” (Lazar 2005a: 141). In addition, the results reported from the
feminist approach on CDA can also serve as a tool for future research to provide tentative
solutions for the fostering of more egalitarian discursive practices. In other words, by
examining the problem, it is later possible to find some solutions to counteract the gender
inequality and stereotyped conventions that exist and are still present in today’s society.
Then, a feminist approach to CDA aims to encourage the identification of features
that promote male biased conceptions and gendered normative and ideologies in general.
Many authors have focused on the need for a feminist CDA (see Walsh 2001, Lazar
2005a). For instance, one of the actions that feminists have taken regarding language and
gender, has to do with the controversial issue regarding the use of the generic “he/man”,
which excludes women, and on how usually media coverage on women is full of gender
stereotypes (Walsh 2001). According to Lazar (2005a), the aim of feminist critical
discourse studies is to understand how “gendered assumptions” and “power relations” are
produced in the discourse, and how these concepts are applied to their social context.
Then, the need for a feminist CDA underlies in the fact that there needs to be a feminist
approach on this discipline in order to understand gender inequality through an objective
perspective.
27
Finally, a feminist perspective on CDA focuses on the social practices not as
neutral categories, but as socially gendered. In other words, it focuses on how these
gendered social practices affect the meanings of male and female. Said that, it is also
important to mention that by tagging the present research paper as a feminist critical
discourse analysis, it identifies it as part of the whole tradition of feminist studies. And
since the present paper aims to understand the social situation of women within society,
it is important to define this work as a contribution to feminist research.
3.2. Media Discourse on female politicians
The power mass media has on its viewers and readers is of a great impact. Mass
media is considered as the vehicle of communication, through which people can get in
contact with international information around the world. In this line, Fairclough states
that:
The media, and media discourse, are clearly a powerful presence in contemporary social
life, particularly since it is a feature of late modernity that cultural facets of society are
increasingly salient in the social order and social change. If culture is becoming more
salient, by the same token so too are language and discourse. (Fairclough, 1995a: 201)
It is also a holder of different ideologies, the ideologies of the people behind the
words. Media discourse, then, serves as a mirror of the public opinion, and the different
ideologies that are implemented within society and within people’s minds. Thus, most
studies have focused on the representation of female politicians in the media (Markstedt
2007, Pappalardo 2007, Zimbabwe 2012, and more), as due to its powerful presence in
today’s society, it has become an interesting source for the analysis and understanding of
social stereotypes and social ideologies. Up to date the different studies that have been
conducted with the goal of finding how media representations are different for male and
female politicians, have shown that there is a high difference between both
representations. Women are usually represented as more compassionate and honest, and
28
that care more about political affairs that have to do with women and children. By
searching on the New York Times about the latest statements of the political candidates to
the presidency, there is a brief description of each of them. In the case of Hillary Clinton,
the NYT states:
For the past several decades, Mrs. Clinton, 68, has lived in the public eye as she has
evolved. She has been a political spouse, the scorned wife of an embattled president, a
senator who surprised her rivals by working across the aisle, and a losing presidential
candidate in 2008 who went on to serve in the administration of Barack Obama, the man
who had bested her. (The New York Times: Hillary Clinton on the issues)7
As can be seen from the description there is a direct link between Hillary and Bill
Clinton and Obama. She is addressed as “the wife”, and as the contender who lost to
Obama. However, in the case of the description of Bernie Sanders, another political
candidate to the presidency, it states the following:
Calling himself a Democratic socialist, Mr. Sanders has served in Congress as an
independent from Vermont for more than two decades. Far to the left in his politics and
sometimes grumpy in his demeanor, he is asking voters to join him in what he has framed
as a political revolution, appealing to progressives frustrated with big challenges like
income inequality. (The New York Times: Bernie Sanders on the issues)8
In this case, Bernie Sanders is described in terms of his own personal traits, rather
than as the husband of somebody, or as being defeated in previous elections by others.
Stereotypes, specifically those regarding gender, are found in the media.
In relation to media discourse, Markstedt (2007) conducted a research in the
elections of the labor party in 2007, in which Harriet Harman was elected. The author
makes a distinction of the different traits associated to both female candidates, personal
7
Hillary Clinton on the issues. The New York Times. Available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/hillary-clinton-on-the-issues.html
8
Bernie Sanders on the issues. The New York Times. Available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/bernie-sanders-on-the-issues.html
29
websites and the ones used in media coverage. Regarding the personal website of
Hartmann, it was found that there was a predominant focus on the political campaign,
rather than on personal issues. However, in the newspaper articles analyzed in nine of the
articles Hartman’s appearance was discussed and mentioned. A similar situation
happened in the research conducted by Pappalardo (2007). She found that criticism was
based on “stereotyped systems of categorization”, in which specific gendered roles were
presupposed and attributed to men and women, regardless of their position, as the men
and women analyzed belonged to the same political office. In the case of the research
conducted in Zimbabwe (2012) the media drew public attention to “age, marital status,
looks, and family” of the female politicians they referred to, a similar finding in the
previously mentioned.
These stereotyped representations are predominantly negative for female
politicians, since they affect directly their public image. In this sense, media
representation could become an obstacle for female performance in the political life, since
women are mostly judged for their appearance, rather than for their qualities as politicians.
These negative and gendered characterization of female politicians in the media can affect
also the likelihood of that candidate to be elected (Markstedt 2007). Therefore, it is of
paramount importance to analyze media representation of the political candidates, as it
serves as a mirror of the current situation of gender stereotyping.
3.3. Sociolinguistic approach on gender
Sociolinguistics is a sub discipline derived from linguistics, which studies the
relationships that exist between linguistic features and sociocultural aspects. Through
sociolinguistics is possible to study many aspects of society, such as the background
situation behind social ideologies and how certain social features have effects on the
language and discourse produced by the individuals within society. As stated before, CDA
30
focuses on an analysis of discourse from many different perspectives, the ones concerning
the formal aspects alongside the understanding of the text in context, in other words, CDA
is also closely related to sociolinguistics, as it deals with features belonging to the
sociolinguistic discipline. Then, in this section some specific terms regarding social
identity and gender schemas are going to be explained.
To begin with, it is important to clarify what social identity is. It is constructed
through the different aspects of an individual’s self-image in relation to the different social
categories he or she belongs to. Within society there are many different categories, such
as gender, age, belief, and so on, since through categorization humans are able to fragment
the whole society into different groups in order to classify and put the whole reality into
order. However, one single individual does not exclusively belong to a certain social
category, and does not need to behave according to all the patterns established and
determined by that category. For instance, the fact that a person was born defined as a
woman does not mean that her behavior has to be defined only through the features that
are characteristic to the social female categorization, since apart from belonging to the
category of being a woman, she can also belong to many other categories that altogether
construct her identity. However, the fact that men and women are strictly divided into two
different categories, male and female, and that they are expected to behave according to
the social category they are assigned to, has led to stereotypes and gendered schemas,
since people tend to believe that a woman for the sake of being a woman, must behave in
a feminine way and care about family and domestic issues, otherwise it would produce a
social clash in the mainstream cognitive knowledge of society (Pappalardo 2007).
Nonetheless, the construction of social identity is influenced by multiple factors, not just
a single one, such as what stereotypes establish. The social identity of an individual is
determined by the different aspects found in the different categories he or she belongs to.
31
On the other hand, gender identity is constructed through the self-comparison of one
individual with “the other” (Gherardi, 1995). The “other” is mainly comprised of the
people that do not belong to the same social category. This situation can develop into a
“intergroup conflict” (Tajfel, 1979), in the sense that in the fight for power, no group
wants to be set as less powerful and subordinate to others. Intergroup conflict deals mainly
with the issues regarding the notion of power, a significant element in the analysis of
CDA. Van Dijk (2001) establishes that “dominated groups may more or less resist, accept,
condone, comply with, or legitimate such power, and even find it “natural” (355). In other
words, the dominated groups, and society in general, are so used to these social
categorizations of being subordinated to more powerful groups that in many cases they
tend to accept this situation. In relation to this, according to Norris (1997), there seems to
be a “gender antagonism” between men and women since the beginning of the times.
Therefore, a comparison between both groups has perpetually been present, the female
group being always in a subordinate position throughout a long history.
Due to the long tradition of female social groups being placed at a subordinate level,
many of the members of this social group, and the society itself, seem to be used to this
situation, and perceive it as “natural”, even though some movements such as Feminism
have fought and still fight for gender equality within the contemporary society. While it
is true that many aspects have changed and that nowadays the situation of women in
relation to men is not as unequal as it used to be decades ago, the subordination and
empowerment of men over women is an issue of concern that has not been fully
eradicated.
In this sense, Valian (1999) discusses how women have not totally reached an
equalitarian position as compared with men, even though apparently we live in a much
more egalitarian society compared to former times. She discusses how some invisible
32
factors affect the situation of women within the public sphere, in which, even though
everything seems to be beneficial for women, the fact that they are still seen and treated
as inferior to their male counterparts is a reality. These invisible factors are determined
by the so-called “gender schemas”. These gender schemas are a “set of implicit, or
nonconscious, hypotheses about sex differences” (Valian 1999: 2). In addition, according
to Chang and Hitchon (1997) “gender schemas” are “traits, activities and behaviors
traditionally associated with men or women”. These preconceived ideas affect our way of
interpreting the world by assuming that men and women should behave in a certain way
according to what is already established. They define then our expectations and
evaluations of what being a woman and a man means. Moreover, these gender schemas
are what lead towards what it is commonly known as gender stereotypes. These gender
schemas can even be unconscious cognitive categories that are implemented in our minds,
and these are constructed since we are born, as a result of the different interactions humans
have and what they learn in the early years at home, from family, society, media and so
on.
Finally, nowadays we live in a society that supposedly looks for an egalitarian
treatment. However, most of the notions of reality and social categorization that are within
people’s minds are sometimes even controlled by non-conscious schemas. Therefore, this
situation makes harder the duty of interpreting the world and “the other” from an objective
perspective, without the interference of preconceived ideas, stereotypes or gender
schemas. In other words, all these unconscious gender schemas tend to condition our own
perception and interpretation of men and women as individuals. As a consequence,
women tend to be marginalized because of these gendered schemas, reducing their
opportunities to take part in a wide number of roles within society, and limit them to roles
subordinated to men. Thus, as long as these gender schemas exist, this problem can still
33
affect negatively women’s public image and consequently also their own performance in
the public sphere.
3.3.1. Gender schemas and stereotypes
Stereotypes are concepts about the specific behavior and the expected roles people
should have in certain situations and under specific conditions, some of them being
culture, gender, or status (Steele and Aronson, 1995: 797-811). In other words,
stereotypes are social images that are over generalized and widespread in society to the
extent that they have been introduced as established structures that condition the behavior
of people. In this sense, it becomes a sort of social trap into which many people can fall,
taking also into account that they are learned even at early stages of life through the
constant exposure to these stereotyped social ideology, which is present in almost every
area of reality. By adopting these stereotypes, the trap may become dangerous, especially
for the people affected by those pre-conceived ideas, which influence negatively their
behavior because of the expected role society has established on them.
Stereotypes are also present in the political sphere, and since in the last years there
has been a remarkable female presence within politics, as evident from important female
figures like Angela Merkel or Hillary Clinton, there has also been a long research tradition
on gender stereotypes on female politicians. Some researchers have found that gender
stereotypes had negative effects on the image that voters have on female politicians.
(Sapiro, 1892; Leeper, 1991; Sanbonmatsu, 2002; Kopf, 2013). In addition, GarciaRetamero et al. (2006: 52) even claim that leadership is perceived as “masculine” and
Buddhapriya supports this observation by stating that many of the qualities assigned to
masculinity are taken as “prototypical leadership traits” (1999: 18). Women who behave
in a more assertive, arrogant and dominant way are seen as “masculine” because they
34
show traits that are expected to be found in men, whereas when men show more emotion,
and are more honest and expressive, then they are considered as “female” because of the
same reasons (Spence and Helmreich, 1978). Besides, according to McElhinny (1995),
stereotyping has a negative influence on women’s behavior to the extent that they tend
“accommodate” by changing their behavior to fit the characteristics socially expected
from them. The “accommodation theory” deals with the acceptance of the gender
stereotypes and the accommodation of the individual’s behavior, in order to fit these social
stereotypes. However, this strategy usually leads to a conflict between the expected
behavior women are expected to have against the way in which they actually behave. As
a result, women who try to break the rules established by stereotyped gender behavior are
usually understood as aggressive and unfeminine. In this line, Tannen claims that “from
childhood, girls learn to temper what they say so as not to sound too aggressive- which
means too certain” (1996: 36). Due to the social conventionalisms and gender schemas,
women have been in the position of hiding their leadership and their empowered behavior
in order to fit to these gender categorizations, since otherwise they would be described as
“bossy” instead of as “leaders” (Tannen 1996).
All these results reflect what seems to be a negative context for female candidates
and leaders in the political sphere, since they are likely to be stigmatized as inferior, thus
leading to a negative context for the development of women’s freedom to express
themselves in a public sphere without being condemned by the prevailing gender
stereotypes that surround them.
3.3.2. Gender identity and stereotypes
Following the previous pages, the current meaning of identity is not well captured
by dictionary definitions, which reflect older senses of the word. Our present idea of
35
identity is rather much more complex. As mentioned in the previous subsection, it is really
a difficult task to define what identity is, as it is not constructed by closed and established
categories; on the contrary, a person’s identity is dynamic and flexible because it is in
constant change. The fact that identity, and even gender identity is flexible and varied
makes it possible for men and women to have a not so socially established set of diverse
interests. In other words, women can naturally be interested in the fields of politics,
economy, and so on, rather than just caring for family issues and welfare, and men can
have the so-called “female” interests such as children’s care, aside from being only
interested in political issues, business or sports, which is what the social stereotypes
expects from them. In this sense, identity plays an important role in the way people,
specifically the way men and women, make use of language, as it is a reflection of what
a person’s identity is made of. People use language in order to exteriorize their knowledge,
and this knowledge is actually the perspective of life marked by each individual’s own
identity. In this line, many researchers have found that there is a close relationship
between gender and discourse (Bergvall, Bing and Freed 1996, Wodak, 1997, Dundas &
Fisher 1998, Walsh, 2001), and some research has been conducted on how gender is
socially constructed through discourse (Wodak 1997, Weatherall 2002).
Language and gender are closely related. It is through discourse that a person gets
to reflect his own identity. However, in a male dominated society what is standard,
especially in the professional life, is the male behavior and, therefore, the male discourse,
which is estimated as better than the female discourse. In the political field, discourse
plays a main role in the success of the politician, however the male dominance of the
female discourse over the male discourse, is obviously much more counterproductive for
women than it could be for men, since women are mostly identified as “space invaders”
(Puwar 1997) and not competitive enough to hold a position within politics. This actually
36
could be one of the reasons behind the fact that nowadays only 22% of the representation
in parliament positions is female.
It is important to date back to former times in order to understand how the freedom
of discourse was conveyed differently for men and women and how it has changed
throughout the years until today. Initially, the role of women was restricted to a private
sphere, therefore their own discourses were also totally limited, as they were not even
allowed to go beyond the private sphere. In relation to this, Nuñez Perucha (2011) makes
a diachronic analysis on four speeches delivered by female activists of feminism. In two
of the speeches analyzed belonging to the first wave of Feminism, the results showed that
women protested against the fact that they were excluded from the public container and
were only considered as part of a subordinate level, where their figure served mainly as
the housewife. This reflects how since the beginning, the relation between gender identity
and the access to public discourse was quite different for men and women. While women’s
position was for many decades reduced to a subordinate place, and they were not even
able to deliver any kind of political speech, which could represent their own ideologies,
men were accepted as powerful and as representatives of society as a whole. Furthermore,
women were mainly understood as “weak and passive, more capable of being led than
leading” (Buddhapriya, 1999:18).
In some more recent research it has been found that, although there has been a
social change throughout the years regarding the situation of women within the public
sphere, some authors (Macdonald 2009:132; Coates, 2004:139) still conclude that women
are perceived and valued more by their role in the domestic life, that is taking care of the
home and the children, rather than for their professional life and political competence, and
are also regarded in terms of their incompetence and their appearance. All this context of
37
suppression has had negative effects on women, and, specifically, on the way of producing
their own discourse.
In relation to the issue of gender and discourse, Jennifer Coates (1986) revealed
many interesting findings. One of the issues found in her research into this field was the
fact that in some texts, “silence” was used as a synonym for “obedience” (Coates 1986:
33). This author mentions that the sex differences that exist behind the different uses of
language made by men and women has to do more with the stereotyped knowledge society
constructs for them, rather than with the own features specific to gender. It seems that
these stereotyped ideas regarding women and language affect directly the way they use
language. In 1995, Steele and Aronson labeled this situation as “Stereotype threat”, as
these stereotypes influence negatively the performance and self-concept of certain
individuals affected by them.
The conceptions of gender and discourse within society seem to be closely
connected to the stereotypical conventions concerning the way men and women produce
their speeches. Discourse is a reflection of all the features that construct our identity.
However, through gender stereotypes identity tends to be socially restricted to a single
structure out of all the wide range of possibilities that exist in real life. Therefore, creating
stereotypes is just an erroneous way of understanding identity.
3.4. Contextualization
3.4.1. Situation of women in today’s society
There is no doubt that in the last years there has been an increase of female
presence in the public life, and in many different labor areas, where many decades ago it
would not even be imagined. One of the main reasons for this situation lies in the fact that
governments have promoted education and equal treatment for women. Another
38
important factor to take into account is the constant fight that feminism has carried out
throughout the years, and still is, for a better quality of women’s life and the spread of
gender equality.
According to some statistics conducted by The United Nations9 in 2011, it was
revealed that in all the countries the percentages of the women in adult labor force, were
in general less than half the total percentage of labor force10. However, it was observed
that the percentages in some countries were higher than in previous generations, such as
Bahamas (49%), Belarus (49%), Australia (45%), Cambodia (50%), China (49%), Czech
Republic (43%), Germany (46%), Israel (47%), and so on. These percentages can be
compared to the percentages in 2012 as provided by Bureau Labor Statistics11, in which
it can be observed how from 1985 to 2012 there was a significant increase in female labor
occupation.
However, even though the female presence has increased in the last years, the
gender inequality is still present. As can be observed in Graphic 2, there is a significant
difference between the annual salary payment for women in comparison with the salary
that men receive. Even though, the rates of earnings for women have increased
significantly over the years, it is still lacking in comparison to the salary men earn. It
seems to be that “most labor economists today accept that discrimination has played a role
in limiting job market opportunities for minorities and women” (Neumark 2016), and the
same happens when it comes to the earning difference that is still present.
9
Available at: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/indwm/
“The total number of people employed or seeking employment in a country or region”
Definition available at: http://www.investorwords.com/2707/labor_force.html#ixzz49CD8fNu4
10
11
Available at: https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/facts_over_time.htm
39
Graphic 2. Median annual earnings by sex, 1960 – 2014. Source: U.S. Census Bureau
In relation to this, the situation of women within the political sphere is also still
male dominated. According to a survey conducted by UN woman 12 in 2015, the
percentage of women’s presence in the Parliament has increased significantly in the last
twenty years from 1995-2015. However, despite this observable growth, nowadays these
figures represent only 22% of female representation in parliament positions, reflecting the
fact that politics is still dominated by men. This situation, from the feminist perspective,
implies a problem because there is still a lack of women representation, as there is not an
equalitarian distribution of female and male politicians. We are talking about the underrepresentation of women in the political sphere, and a male dominated political system.
12
UN Woman. Facts and Figures: Leadership and Political Participation. Available at:
http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/leadership-and-political-participation/facts-and-figures
40
And now, after all these conceptions and reviews on research conducted in the area
of gender issues and discourse, being examined, now the present study will be centered
on the following analyses. First, I will focus on the analysis of the political speeches of
Hillary Clinton though CDA and subsequently on the pronoun choice (Tannen 1996) and
the social reasons behind the uses of “I” and we”, as tools for the identification of the selfcharacterization of the politician, Hillary Clinton. Secondly, the following analysis will
be focused as well on conducting CDA on some articles reporting about the politician and
her speeches delivered – already examined in the previous analysis– followed by an
analysis on reporting verbs (Caldas-Coulthard 1995) as tools for the identification of
media representation of the same politician, in order to ultimately understand whether the
self-characterization and media representation are connected objectively and based one
on another, or whether the correspondence between both is biased by gender schemas and
stereotypes.
3.5. Introduction to corpus linguistics
First, before going further, it is important to understand some basic notions
regarding Corpus Linguistics, since it is the first step in the preliminary analysis of the
data compiled for the present research. It is a “sophisticated” (Hunston, 2006)
methodology used for conducting linguistic analyzes, and consist in “the compilation and
analysis of corpora” (Cheng, 2012). This method is carried out on a large collection of
data, which conform a corpus. According to Hunston (2006: 234) “most modern corpora
are at least 1 million words in size and consist either of complete texts or of large extracts
from long texts.” In other words, a corpus is a collection of multiple texts, usually stored
in an electronic database in order to make it more easily accessible, due to the fact that
the amount of information gathered in a corpus is too large so as to be manually
investigated. Thus, the linguistic analysis is more feasible thanks to the availability of
41
computers and technological tools, such as the Wordsmith tools, which is actually used
for the analysis of the data in the present study.
There is not a specific measure for the information collected in the corpora, as its
size depends mostly on the research that is going to be carried out. The sample texts are
naturally created texts, that is to say that they are not artificial productions of the language.
The main reason for this lies in the fact that these corpora are the basic tool used for
Corpus Linguistics analysis. In this line, Corpus Linguistics is based on the analysis of
linguistic issues in naturally occurring language instances, and this analysis is carried out
through the use of corpora. In this case, in the present research the analyzed data is in
written language, since we are interested primarily in the linguistic and sociolinguistic
aspects of media representation and in the speeches of Hillary Clinton, rather than in the
non-verbal language, such as gestures.
Through the implementation of technological devices, the analysis of linguistic
texts has made the task for linguistics much easier and feasible, as they can work with
wider amount of texts, without having to manually study each sample gathered. However,
some authors, specifically Chomsky, have taken up a negative position on this. Chomsky
argued that “the goals of linguistics are not the enumeration and description of
performance phenomena, but rather they are introspection and explanation of linguistic
competence” (McEnery & Wilson 2004:12) These interpretations are, to some extent,
understandable, since if Linguistics is concerned with the study of certain issues of the
human language, the results obtained from the analysis of the language through the use of
corpora would be limited in comparison with the infinite possibilities human language
presents. Yet, the advantages of using corpora in Linguistics enable the researchers to go
even further, as they facilitate the process and the analysis of aspects of the language,
which if done manually would become a harder task or even an almost impossible one to
42
accomplish. And this positive feature of Corpus Linguistics can be observable through
the fact that even today, most linguistics use these technological and computerized tools,
in order to make further research in the field of Linguistics. Therefore, in the present study
there is a combination of the use of Corpus Linguistics for the analysis of the data and a
subsequent critical discourse analysis of the same data, in order to achieve a more
complete and detailed information and perspective of the main issues we are trying to
analyze and understand.
3.5.1. The use of Corpus Linguistics as a tool for text analysis
The following lines are directed towards a more specific description of the uses
and different tools available for the text analysis. First, according to Stubbs (2005),
through corpus linguistics it is possible to analyze certain features and aspects in literary
texts, which if done manually, would not be possible. And there are nowadays a wide
variety of computerized tools that are used in Corpus Linguistics for text analysis, such
as Wordsmith and AntConc. Most of them share almost the same functions for the text
analysis. First, the most basic feature of text analysis consists in the “occurrence” of
certain words or phrases. Through this tool it is possible to find out not only the
occurrences and the frequency a certain word appears in the corpus, but also in which text
of the corpus and at which part of the text they were found, as well as the “concordance
lines”, which show the words or phrases in context.
Regarding the use of Word Lists, this tool offers a list with “the number of times
a word occurs in the corpus.” (Hunston, 2006: 235) In other words, it provides the
frequency a certain word or phrase appears in the whole corpus. However, this
information needs to acquire a comparative nature in order to be useful; in this sense, the
information regarding frequency is generally used in Corpus Linguistics for carrying out
a comparison between two corpora.
43
And finally, regarding the use of Keywords, it is possible to compare the frequencies
that appear in one Wordlist in comparison with another Wordlist, in order to identify
which words appear to a wider extent and frequency in each of the Word lists. In this case,
only Concordance and Wordlist were employed for the initial identification of the most
frequently used words found in the articles analyzed, regarding media representation; in
order to use this information as a basis for the subsequent qualitative analysis carried out
on the same data.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1. Analysis on Hillary Clinton’s speeches
4.1.1. Word frequency and comparison as a source for self-characterization
Discourse is the representation of the identity and personal mindset each
individual has. It is the verbalization of one’s ideals, beliefs and personal ways of
understanding the world. Therefore, in relation to this, this section is focused on the
analysis of ten different political speeches delivered by Hillary Clinton, in order to
evaluate how she characterizes herself as a woman and as a politician. For this purpose,
the focus of this analysis will be centered on a feminist CDA.
First, a Wordlist was set in order to find out the most frequently used words. For
this purpose, out from the results obtained I focused only on content words that could be
helpful to understand the self-characterization of the politician. These results seem to
suggest that Hillary mentions a wide range of different issues of interest in her speeches.
She covers many issues regarding nation, unity, family and childcare, women, security,
and justice.
(Insert Table 5 here)
Table 5. Content words and their word frequency found in the speeches of Hillary
Clinton.
44
In general terms, her speeches accentuate the idea of “America” as a great nation
which needs to be “united” in order to break the “barriers” and make a better place for
everybody, with no exception. By doing this, Hillary uses her speeches as a way of giving
hope to the country and the people, and thus, incites them to believe in her campaign. This
whole issue of national unity is actually a sensitive issue nowadays, taking into account
the social and political situation not only United States but also many other countries are
facing nowadays. Lately, many terrorist attacks have taken place in France and in the
United States, leaving many victims and families in a state of terror. These events have
disturbed the sense of security and unity not only in the countries affected but also all over
the world. Therefore, it is important nowadays to give hope to people that a bright future
is yet to come and that a better country is possible, and Hillary does not fail to use this
issue to gain more favor to her candidacy. And as can be observed in the examples below,
Hillary constantly refers to America as the nation that needs to be united and “we” as the
people who can take action into fighting for its unity and improvement.
(1) there’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be cured by what’s right with America.
(2) unify our party to win this election and build an America where we can all rise
together – an America where we lift each other up instead of tearing each other down.
(3) America can’t succeed unless you succeed. That is why I am running for President of
the United States
(4) The mothers and fathers at my events who lift their little girls on their shoulders and
whisper in their ears, "See, you can be anything you want."
With this, she does not only give hope to the audience, but also incites them to
take action in the change, and voting is one of the challenges they need to take
responsibility for, since in the example 3 can be seen that America’s success appears
closely related to the reason behind she is running for president. Then, she is
characterizing herself as the solution for the current situation of the country. Despite the
fact that this political rhetoric technique may be seen as a feature used by all politicians
45
in order to persuade people to vote, this emphasizes the fact that Hillary also shares this
tendency with many other male politicians, establishing an equal relationship between
men and women in politics. In addition, since politics is mainly male dominated, she
becomes part of that group of women who are succeeding in the political life, and thus,
can serve as a role model for many other women (see instance 4).
Furthermore, in the quantitative analysis, it has been observed that Hillary
mentions other male politicians in her speeches, such as president Obama, Bernie Sanders
and Trump. Out from these results it has been observed that in most of the cases she
mentions the other three politicians as a way of establishing a comparison between them
and herself. This could reveal interesting results when it comes to the self-characterization
of Hillary in terms of how she sees herself in comparison with other influential and
important male politicians. According to Gherardi (1995), gender identity is constructed
through the comparison of one individual with others. In this case, as can be seen in the
examples below, she addresses Obama with positive remarks and introduces him as a
representative example worthy to be followed, and characterizes herself as his successor
who intends to follow his “accomplishments”, and the “progress” he has made during his
presidential time. Given the fact that Obama has been one of the most popular presidents
in the history of the United States and has many followers and supporters in the nation,
this positive comparison also reinforces the public image of Hillary as a good
representative of the United States.
(5) I am so looking forward to working with the congressman to make the changes and
continue the progress that we can build on the record and accomplishments of
President Obama.
(6) And we can create those good jobs by building on the progress we’ve made under
President Obama.
(7) We have to build on the progress of the Obama Administration in locking down
loose nuclear materials, and other WMD, so they never fall into the hands of terrorists
who seek them actively around the world.
46
What is more, she also mentions Bernie Sanders and Trump many times. On the
one hand, in the case of Sanders, she makes positive evaluation of the candidate. In the
instances 8 and 9, she characterizes herself as being at the same level as Bernie, and
establishes a sense of unity between both campaigns saying that “there is much more that
unites us than divides us”.
(8) “And to all the people who supported Senator Sanders, I believe there is much more
that unites us than divides us.”
(9) Because whether you support Senator Sanders or you support me, there’s much
more that unites us than divides us
In addition, as can be seen in the instances below, she dedicates many instances of
her speech to congratulate Sanders for his performance and the results of his political
campaign. By doing this comparison, she puts herself at the same level as him and
emphasizes her competence in relation to the male candidate. With this, she actually
breaks the boundaries between herself as a woman and the conception of the ideal
behavior in politics, which is usually ruled by “male-orientated patterns” (Clare Walsh:
2001).
(10) I want to congratulate Senator Sanders on running a great race.
(11) And I applaud Senator Sanders and his millions of supporters for challenging us to get
unaccountable money out of our politics and giving greater emphasis to closing the gap
of inequality
On the other hand, Trump is also mentioned to serve as a comparison between
Hillary’s and Trump’s candidatures. However, as can be observed in the instance 12, he
is all the time regarded as the opposite to Hillary.
(12) Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are pushing a vision for America that’s divisive and
frankly dangerous (…) And we have a very different vision. It’s about lifting each
other up.
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Through this comparison she establishes herself as a better option who seeks for
“a different vision” and as a solution against the “divisive” campaign of Mr. Trump. All
these results seem to suggest that one of the features that constructs her selfcharacterization is the comparison of the self and the other people. And she carries out
this comparison in different ways in order to establish power relationships between herself
and the other politicians. For instance, in the case of Obama and Sanders, she first makes
sure to introduce them as progressive and people who have accomplished many things,
and successful, and then characterizes herself as the successor of Obama and as being
similar to Sanders, and then, she represents herself as being equally competent as them.
Whereas in the case of Trump, she first describes him as a bad example of a politician,
and then, characterizes herself as a better candidate in comparison to him. Fr instance, in
the example 12 she clearly emphasizes the fact that she has the vision of unity of “lifting
each other up”, different to the goals Trump seeks.
In addition, as in the case of Trump, she also describes how other candidates do
not believe in America as a great nation, and, after that, she emphasizes her role as the
ideal candidate, who, contrary to them, really believes in the nation. She once again makes
use of the comparison of herself and the nation as part of the in-group against the
outgroup, in which the other candidates, who do not believe in America as a “great”,
“unselfish” and “compassionate” country, belong. Apart from that, this makes out of
Hillary a more reliable and desirable candidate, in whom hope can be found, which is of
vital importance taking into account the present social and political situation of the United
States and all over the world.
(13) But despite what other candidates say, we believe in the goodness of our people and
the greatness of our nation.
48
(14) we are a great country, an unselfish country, and a compassionate country. And no
matter what anyone tells you, or what you might hear from others running for
president, that is still true today.
(15) So in this election, we will have to stand together and work hard to prevail against
candidates on the other side who would threaten all those rights and pit Americans
against each other.
As far as the self-characterization of Hillary is concerned, she also makes sure to
characterize herself as in relation to “experience”. She mentions the contributions she has
made within the political history of the United States since her early years, and how she
dealt with many different issues such as the Children’s Health insurance, the political ties
with Israel, and with environmental and military issues. With this, she does not only assure
her public image as an experienced candidate, but also breaks the stereotyped “female”
behavior expected from women, which understands that only “family” and “welfare”
issues are “female” interests. (Caldas-Coulthard 1995, Khan 1996, Norris 1997, Chang &
Hitchon 1997, Markstedt 2007, Pappalardo 2007, Hall and Dunn 2008). Also, she
mentions her previous contributions alongside Barack Obama, once again demonstrating
how men and women can work together for the improvement of the country, and be
successful in that duty regardless of gender issues. For instance, in the following samples
she mentions most of her accomplishments as a first lady, as a secretary of state and even
in her years as a law student.
(16) as First Lady, I worked with both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to create the
Children’s Health Insurance Program that covers eight million children.
(17) You know, as a senator from New York and secretary of State I’ve had the privilege of
working closely with AIPAC members to strengthen and deepen America’s ties with
Israel.
(18) My first job out of law school was for the Children’s Defense Fund. I walked door-to
door to find out how many children with disabilities couldn’t go to school, and to help
build the case for a law guaranteeing them access to education.
As far as the self-characterization analysis is concerned, Hillary Clinton also
characterizes herself many times as a “progressive”, who “follows progressive goals”.
49
She also talks about the “progressive tradition” of many presidents from Roosevelt to
Obama, and establishes their contributions as the ideal path she intends to follow. With
this, she identifies herself as part of that group of “progressive” politicians, as can be seen
in the examples 19 and 20.
(19) Pledging to build on the progressive tradition that’s done so much for America, from
Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama. And tonight, a little less than a year later, the
race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch and victory is in sight.
(20) So we will build on a strong progressive tradition from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack
Obama.
(21) And in this campaign, we are setting bold progressive goals backed up by real plans
that will improve lives
Furthermore, she does not fail to mention her identity as a woman. She describes
in her speeches how she has come to be a source of inspiration for other women who “are
helpful of seeing a woman in the White House” and even for children, whose parents use
her as an example to prove their daughters that they “can be anything they want” (see 22);
and also stresses on the fact that she is close to be the “first woman president in the history
of the United States”.
(22) The mothers and fathers at my events who lift their little girls on their shoulders and
whisper in their ears, "See, you can be anything you want."
(23) Well, I may not be the youngest candidate in this race. But I will be the youngest
woman President in the history of the United States!
(24) the women in their 90s who tell me they were born before women could vote. And they're
hopeful of seeing a woman in the White House.
However, she does not appeal to her woman status as the basis for her candidature
to be considered as the best option to occupy the presidential seat just for the sake of being
a woman, on the contrary, she also makes sure to describe her experience and the
measurements she has planned to improve the country in all of its areas. In addition, she
also tends to mention frequently other women who have been a source of inspiration for
her. As can be observed in the samples below, she describes women as empowered human
50
beings who take advantage of their tragedies and transform those into an impulse for
change. In most of her speeches, she uses women’s real lives and experiences as an
example of what America is about, and in addition, she gives the hope that a better future
is possible, even after the darkest moments in life. Besides, she mentions the need for
gender equality and equal payment and treatment for women in all of her speeches. These
results were actually expected due to the feminist ideology Hillary holds, and since she
has devoted most of her career to fight for equality of gender.
(25) Marian Wright … She was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, a
lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in Jackson, a friend of Dr. King’s and Robert
Kennedy’s before they were assassinated, altogether a remarkable leader.
(26) And we’re going to support black entrepreneurs, especially black women, who are a
powerful entrepreneurial force to get the capital they need to start and grow small
businesses
(27) Their grief is unimaginable but they have not been broken. Instead, they are
channeling their sorrow into a strategy and their mourning into a movement.
(28) And tonight I want to pay tribute to five extraordinary women who criss-crossed this
state with me and for me. Five mothers, brought together by tragedy… They all lost
children, which is almost unimaginable. Yet they have not been broken or embittered.
Instead, they have channeled their sorrow into a strategy and their mourning into a
movement. And they are reminding us of something deep and powerful in the American
spirit.
Finally, she also describes herself as person who commits mistakes and is not
afraid of accepting her responsibility for them, which reinforces her characterization as a
more approachable, and humble person, who accepts that makes mistakes and is not
perfect, and does not need to lie about it, which establishes her image as a person who can
be trusted.
(29) And along the way, I’ll just let you in on this little secret. I won’t get everything right.
Lord knows I’ve made my share of mistakes. Well, there’s no shortage of people
pointing them out! And I certainly haven’t won every battle I’ve fought. But leadership
means perseverance and hard choices. You have to push through the setbacks and
disappointments and keep at it.
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In general lines, regarding the self-characterization of Hillary found in her
speeches, it has been found that she tends to use a wide range of sources and descriptions
to reinforce her public image as a valid candidate. She characterizes herself through the
comparison with other male candidates, in order to describe herself as being equally
competitive as many other remarkable male politicians, and as a better solution in
comparison with other less desired male politicians. In addition, she constantly makes
sure to explain her long experience within politics and is not afraid of mentioning her
status as a woman, and of showing up her feminist ideology by using preponderantly
women’s real experiences as examples of struggle and surmounting. Moreover, she covers
a wide range of different issues in her speeches, from family, childcare and welfare to
military and economic issues, breaking any gendered conception that could hold any
skepticism against her, just for the prejudice of her being a female candidate for the
presidential seat.
4.1.2. Pronoun choice: The uses of the pronoun “we”
Now, following the line of research of Tannen (1996), I have focused on the
analysis of pronoun choices, specifically on the use of the pronouns “I” and “we”, to verify
whether there is a tendency to share credit with others, which, as explained in the
theoretical Background Section, is a commonly used tool by women in order to
“accommodate” to the social gender categorizations (McElhinny 1995). For this purpose,
both qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted.
First, a quantitative analysis was carried out in order to find the difference in use
rate of “I” and “we”. As can be seen in Graphic 3, the total amount of 352 instances were
found for the pronoun “I”, while 524 instances were found for “we”.
52
PRONOUN CHOICE
5 24
"We"
352
"I"
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
Pronoun Choice
Graphic 3. Pronoun choice: Instances of the pronoun “we” and “I” in the speeches
of Hillary Clinton.
These results seem to suggest that the female politician uses “we” to a significantly
wider extent than the pronoun “I” in her political speeches. However, according to Tannen
(1996) this situation is quite usual, since “it is not uncommon for many men to say “I” in
situations where many women would say “we””. That is to say, that women tend to use
“we” and thus, share credit with their audience, rather than assuming all the time full
credit for their own triumphs. Yet, this tendency may affect women negatively since their
individual achievements may go unnoticed, and this could help to reinforce the gendered
schemas. Aside from the fact that in the case of political candidates it is important that
they get recognized for their actions so that voters can eventually know the candidate they
are voting for.
So, through a qualitative analysis of each of the instances in which “we” and “I”
are used, many results were obtained. Regarding the use of “I”, it has been observed that
53
Hillary tends to employ the pronoun mostly for expressing gratitude in her speeches (see
30), to mention personal traits of herself or personal beliefs (31), to describe her plans of
action (see 32), when she states her commitment as the future president (33) and the
reasons underlying her candidacy (34). In other words, she uses the pronoun “I” for more
intimate and personal statements, as can be seen in the following samples.
(30) Thank you all so much. Wow. I just want to thank all of you, everyone who came out to
vote here in Pennsylvania
(31) “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose
heart.” These are words to live by and I believe these are words to govern by.
(32) This is a threat that knows no borders. That’s why I’ve laid out a plan to take the fight
to ISIS from the air
(33) As your President, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Americans safe
(34) That is why I am running for President of the United States.
On the other hand, regarding the use of “we”, it is important to mention the two
uses of the pronoun according to Walsh (2001). These two uses of “we” are the inclusive
and the exclusive. On the one hand, the exclusive “we” “can lead to an impersonal and/or
authoritative address”. On the other hand, the inclusive “we” “presupposes common
ground between text producers and assumed readers/listener” (Walsh 2001: 49). That is
to say that the difference between both relies on the degree of cohesion between the
audience and the speech producer, which could lead to either the exclusion of the person
that is being addressed, or the sense of unity between the text producer and his or her
audience. Then, the inclusive “we” holds the connotation of “us”, blurring the division
between the addressee and the text producer, while the exclusive “we” holds the meaning
of “I”, excluding the addressee. However, in the political context this association is
somewhat different, in the sense that the exclusive “we” is used to mention the candidate
and the government, while the inclusive “we” refers to the nation and the country as a
whole.
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In this case, in most of the instances Hillary uses the pronoun “we” in its inclusive
connotation, as she tends to use it to emphasize the unity of the nation, and that, not only
her and her campaign representatives, but the audience altogether can achieve their goals
of constructing a better place for everybody. Taking into account the social context
nowadays, it seems to be much more plausible the idea that “we” is mostly used in its
inclusive form as a way of reinforcing the mainstream sense of unity. As can be seen in
the following text Hillary not only addresses the audience and herself as being part of the
same in-group through the inclusive use of “we” but also mentions the out-group by the
pronoun “they” which refers to jihadism. She also tries to persuade people to take action
against the state of terror that jihadism has aroused, and as in the case of women’s
representation previously analyzed, she also characterizes America and Americans as a
powerful nation who “will not buckle or break” in spite of the challenges they have faced,
and that will pursue their enemies “with unyielding power and purpose”:
(35) As hard as this is, it’s time to move from fear to resolve. It’s time to stand up and say,
“We are Americans.” We are the greatest nation on earth not in spite of the challenges
we’ve faced, but because of them. Americans will not buckle or break. We will not turn
on each other or turn on our principles. We will pursue our enemies with unyielding
power and purpose. We will crush their would-be caliphate and counter radical jihadism
wherever it takes root. We’re in it for the long haul. And we’ll stand taller and stronger
than they can possibly imagine.
That’s what we do here. It’s who we are. That’s how we’ll win, by looking at one
another with respect, with concern, with commitment. That’s the America that I know
makes us all so proud to be a part of.
However, there are also many samples in which she uses “we” in its exclusive
form to share the responsibility and the achievements with people from her campaign,
which on the one hand is something normal within political speeches, but on the other
hand it could undermine her position as a leader and , thus, reinforce the gendered notions
that women tend to share credit with others as a form to “accommodate” their speeches
to the social gendered categorizations in order to be portrayed as “less aggressive” and
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“less assertive”. These results seem to suggest that, actually, in many cases she tends to
share the credit with others, however this situation could be explained due to the fact that
actually there are many people working side by side with her in her campaign, and thus,
she regards many of the measurements and plans through the “exclusive we”.
(36) In the days ahead we will propose new ways for more Americans to get involved in
national service and give back to our communities because everyone of us has a role to
play in building the future we want.
Out from the results obtained so far, it has been observed that Hillary tends to use
the pronoun “I” for more personal descriptions of herself, such as her beliefs, and her
experience as a politician. Whereas in the case of the pronoun choice of “we”, the results
show that she tends to share her triumphs with the audience constantly, taking into account
that the use of the pronoun “we” in comparison with the pronoun “I” is significantly
higher.
According to Van Dijk (1998: 203) “there are few words in the language that may
be socially and ideologically loaded as a simple “we”. And all these results obtained from
the analysis on the uses of “we” seem to reveal that even though there were found some
instances in which she employed “we” in its exclusive connotation, she always referred
to herself and to the people working with her in her campaign. In addition, Hillary Clinton
uses the pronoun “we” in its inclusive connotation to a wider extent, revealing that she
actually tends to share credit for her triumphs with others. However, another tentative
explanation for this situation could underlie in the idea that she may make a high use of
the inclusive “we” in order to reinforce the idea of unity her campaign wants to deliver
and to encourage the audience to take part in the action. This assumption could also be
based on the social context that has damaged the national identity and unity, caused by
the problems with ISIS and the economic crisis.
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4.2. Media representation of Hillary Clinton
Media has an important impact and influence in the way the image and
characterization of public figures is constructed. Therefore, following the aims of this
research, the following analysis will be focused on the study of the public characterization
of Hillary Clinton. For this purpose, quantitative and qualitative analyses will be
conducted on ten news articles, in order to evaluate how Hillary’s performance and
speeches previously analyzed were represented in the media, as compared to Hillary’s
self-characterization. The data was compiled from four different newspapers, The New
York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Since
all the newspapers selected have different social backgrounds and different political
ideologies, which can be seen in the Theoretical Background Section, the present analysis
acquires a wider perspective on media representation and characterization on the female
politician Hillary Clinton.
4.2.1.
Word frequency and comparison as a tool for media representation
Firstly, I have focused on the quantitative analysis of the articles chosen. As in the
case of the first corpus, by using Wordsmith tools, a Wordlist was set in order to find the
most recurrent words that appear in all the texts compiled. I have focused for this purpose
once again only on content words, specifically, nouns, adjectives and verbs, which have
lexical meaning and thus can provide more meaningful outcomes for the understanding
of the interpretation of Hillary Clinton in the media. In this case, the words chosen with
the most frequency rate found in the Wordlist were words like “Sanders”, “Obama”,
“Trump”, “Bernie”, “America”, “attacks”, “better”, “experience”, “progressive”,
“together”, and “tough”.
(Insert Table 6 here)
Table 6. Word frequency in media representation of Hillary Clinton in comparison with
the most frequently used content words of the speech analysis.
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As can be observed in the Table 6, there are many similarities among the most
frequently used words employed to characterize her in the media and the words with the
higher frequency rate found in the speeches of Hillary, such as “America”, “together”,
“women”, “Obama”, “progress”, “Sanders” and “Trump”. This situation can be explained
through the fact that the articles chosen report about the same speeches in previous
sections analyzed. In the speech analysis, it was revealed that Hillary tends to compare
herself with other politicians, and thus, characterize herself as an empowered woman. As
was the case of Hillary’s speeches, in the media there seems to be also a tendency to
compare Hillary to her male counterparts in the media. Through a qualitative analysis, it
has been observed that Hillary is in most of the cases regarded as better prepared and
much more experienced than other candidates, especially as compared to Bernie Sanders
and Trump. These results were striking, in the sense that news articles follow a more
objective position on the reported news. However, in many cases, the author tends to cite
what other people say about Hillary Clinton as a way of reinforcing her representation
mainly in a positive way.
In the case of the relation established between Obama and Hillary, it has been
observed that there is a variety of different connotations underlying the comparison of
both politicians. As can be observed in the instances 37 to 38, Obama is mentioned in
relation to Hillary as a reminder of the past situation in the elections of 2008, in order to
remark on the fact that in the present campaign Hillary is more prepared to be the
president; and how, in spite of being defeated by him in the general elections, her
campaign in 2008 was also pretty successful, since it is highlighted how she “in the
broader sweep of history” defeated Obama in New Hampshire and in Ohio.
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(37) Clinton learned that lesson eight years ago when she was the trailing candidate, trying
unsuccessfully to catch then-Sen. Barack Obama. Now, she seems likely to be on the
winning side of the equation.
(38) We tend to forget those moments — (…) Barack Obama losing to Clinton in New
Hampshire — in the broader sweep of history.
However, in the instance 39, the article seems to highlight on the fact that she used
that victory from years ago as tool for the description of herself as “the Democrat’s best
hope” in her previous campaign. This shows that the tendency of Hillary to compare
herself with other male politicians was also present in her political speeches in 2008
(39) Mrs. Clinton prevailed in Ohio in 2008 against Mr. Obama and referred to that
victory frequently during their campaign, arguing that the Democrats’ best hope in any
general election was the winner of that state’s primary.
(40) “Clinton shares Obama’s unpopular, failed strategy to combat ISIS,” the RNC said.
This situation actually undermines her public image, since she in this case, her
comparison with another politician has led to a negative evaluation of Hillary in relation
to her comparison with Obama. As can be observed in the instance 40, the comparison
with another politician leads to the negative interpretation of Hillary, in which she is
described by the “Republican National Committee” (RNC) as the supporter of the
“unpopular” and “failed” measurements taken by president Obama regarding ISIS.
As far as the relationship established between Bernie and Hillary is concerned,
there is a somewhat different situation in the relationship represented here in comparison
with the relationship she manages to describe in her speeches. In the speech analysis, it
was observed that she tends to compare herself to Bernie and highlights the fact that there
are more things that unite them than divide them. However, in the media, in most of the
cases, Hillary is regarded as better prepared and more competent and experienced for
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occupying the presidential seat than Sanders. For instance, the following samples show
how she is described through her better performance in the voting results and how she
“racked up impressive vote totals in New York City, with its diverse electorate, and in its
populous suburban counties”.
(41) Mr. Sanders had pointed to New York, where he was born, as a place where he could
take a bite out of Mrs. Clinton’s formidable lead in convention delegates. He campaigned
hard in what became a sharp-edged fight for the state, delivering his call for a political
revolution to thousands of people who crowded a series of outdoor rallies. But Mrs.
Clinton, who represented the state for eight years in the Senate, racked up impressive
vote totals in New York City, with its diverse electorate, and in its populous suburban
counties.
(42) Mrs. Clinton had a commanding 58% of the vote to Mr. Sanders’s 42%.
Now, regarding the representation of Hillary in the media, aside from the
comparison with other political candidates, it is important to mention that in the articles
analyzed the characterization of Hillary is portrayed through two different ways. One
makes reference to what other people state about Hillary and is inserted in the text, while
the second one refers to the characterization of Hillary from the self-interpretation of the
text producer. As can be observed in the following examples, in most of the cases the
author mentions what other people and representatives from the opposition state about
Hillary.
(43) Allison Moore, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, called the
speech “chock-full of hypocritical attacks, partisan rhetoric and ideas from the past
that led to a sluggish economy.”
(44) For a campaign criticized for lacking passion, the event gave Mrs. Clinton the ability
to create a camera-ready tableau of excitement.
(45) the former governor of Maryland, who is also seeking the Democratic presidential
nomination, criticized her as vague on trade and other issues.
(46) “There isn’t enough money in the world to make me vote for Hillary,” said Ms. Kolasa.
“She says whatever it takes to get elected.”
(47) But he said that if it came to a Trump-Clinton match-up, “given the two evils, I’d
probably vote for Hillary.”
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In this case, the majority of the instances make negative evaluation of the female
politician, by characterizing her as “lacking passion”, as somebody who “says whatever
it takes to be get elected”, even as “evil; while her speeches are regarded as a “chock-full
of hypocritical attacks”, and “vague”. Even though negative evaluation of Hillary is
present in the media, there has not been evidence found that these are gender biased or
due to gender stereotypes, at least they are not explicitly mentioned. The reasons given
for the negative evaluation on her are based on political issues and ideologies, rather than
for her status as a woman, or as an intruder in the male biased gender schemas in politics.
However, in some articles, specifically, in the tenth article analyzed, which
belongs to the Wall Street Journal, it has been observed that overall it tends to emphasize
the actions and statements of Sanders and his campaign, while it makes a negative
interpretation of Hillary through the mentioning of the negative evaluation other people
make out of her. Taking into account that the dominant political ideology underlying the
Wall Street Journal, is mostly conservative, it is understandable the fact that Hillary is not
regarded as positively as would be expected. Nonetheless, since Sanders’s candidature
also belongs to the democratic campaign, this situation could be understood as being male
biased. Furthermore, in the first articles analyzed she is regarded much more positively
than what is found in the later articles. And, since the articles gathered follow the same
chronological order as the speeches analyzed, this could manifest that the more successful
she is in the elections, the more she is likely to be regarded negatively.
Then, in this line, as can be seen in the following samples, even though there are
also many negative descriptions of the candidate, there is also positive evaluation about
her, in which over all her experience and her suitability to be elected president are
highlighted. In the instances shown below it can be observed that Hillary is characterized
as “the smarter choice” and for being elected. Besides, experience seems to be a key word
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when addressing Hillary, over all regarding her experience with political and economic
issues (see 49 and 50).
(48) he said, citing her experience, particularly on foreign policy. “I like a lot of the ideas
Sanders has—I really do. But I think Clinton is the smarter choice.”
(49) Hillary Clinton sought Tuesday to showcase her long national security experience in
the face of renewed fears about homegrown terror threats.
This description reinforces her public image as a qualified candidate, who is not
only concerned with familiar and gender issues, contrary to what was found in previous
research. Moreover, she is also characterized as somebody who has a strong will and
defends her ideas (see 50), accentuating her empowered character. It is also mentioned
how Hillary characterizes herself in her speeches as a “fighter” and even some of her lines
found in her speeches are quoted, being one of the “biggest applause lines” the one
regarding her self-characterization as a woman and politician (see instance 52).
(50) Mrs. Clinton also was tough, particularly on the issue of gun restriction.
(51) Mrs. Clinton portrayed herself as a fighter, sounding a theme her campaign had
emphasized in recent days. “I’ve been called many things by many people, quitter
is not one of them,” she said.
(52) In one of the biggest applause lines, she said: “I may not be the youngest
candidate in this race, but I will be the youngest woman president in the history
of the United States.”
These results may seem striking since according to previous research, former
results showed that media representation on female politicians was fully stereotyped and
that women were characterized as less competent, less experienced, and less prepared than
their male counterparts (Walsh 2001). However, on the basis of the results obtained from
this analysis it can be observed that there seems to be an increase in positive evaluation
towards female politicians, and that the attributes tied to women in previous research on
media representation appear now in relation to a male politician, while the female
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politician in comparison, in this case Hillary Clinton, is portrayed as better qualified and
experienced. The reason behind the increase in a positive evaluation on Hillary Clinton
may be due to the fact that the present situation is quite different from the context in which
the previous research was conducted. In the case of Hillary Clinton, she is now well
known in the political history of the United States, and thus, she incorporates an ambitious
career throughout the years to her curriculum, since she has been active in politics for
such a long time. In addition, she served as the secretary of the State during the first period
of Barack Obama as president gaining the favor of the public after he was defeated by
Obama in the elections of 2008. Moreover, the fact that she is a feminist has also attracted
many support from men and women who share the same political ideologies.
These results seem to show that the situation has changed in relation to media
representation of women. Contrary to what was found in previous research, the positive
evaluation of the candidate seems to be increasing in comparison to previous situations,
in which media was much more gender stereotyped when reporting female candidates.
However, from the results obtained here, it can also be observed that the tendency to
evaluate women in relation to their male counterparts and to be addressed as “less
competitive” is still present. That is to say that, although the situation seems to have
changed positively for women’s evaluation in the media, the negative interpretation of
them is still present, though to a lower extent than what was found in previous research.
4.2.2. The choice of reporting verbs
On the other hand, the second part of the analysis on media representation of
Hillary Clinton will be focused on the use of reporting verbs.
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When women behave in ways that oppose to what is standardized as the female
behavior, this tends to have a negative repercussion in the way media addresses them
(Gidengil, 2000). However, in the preliminary analysis on the word frequency, it was
found that on the one hand, there has been an increase in the positive evaluation of Hillary
present in the media, through which she is characterized as “better prepared” and “more
experienced”. On the other hand, many instances of the establishment of the female
politician as inferior were also found, being Hillary represented as “vague”, “evil”, and
as somebody who does whatever it takes to be elected.
For the purpose of the analysis of reporting verbs, the Concordance Tool was
employed. Of the instances found for each reporting verb, only the instances used to report
on the speeches of Hillary were selected. First, as far as the use of reporting verbs in
relation to Hillary is concerned, Graphic 4 shows all the reporting verbs that were used in
order to describe parts of the speech delivered by the female politician.
Reporting verbs
focus
6%
tell
6%
pledge
3%
offer
5%
add
8%
say
72%
say
add
offer
focus
tell
pledge
Graphic 4. The use of reporting verbs in media representation of Hillary Clinton
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The results show that the verb say is by far the most commonly used, with a 72%
of the total amount of reporting verbs used, followed by add, offer, focus, tell and pledge.
This result was actually expected since, according to Cappon (1991, 73), the verb to say
is usually the most commonly used in the reported speech since it is “short, clear, neutral
and accurate”. In other words, say is mostly preferred, since it gives an unequivocal
reporting of the speech delivered by a specific individual. Its neutrality contributes to the
avoidance of possible misinterpretations produced by the writer of the article, and reports
directly the speech of the speaker.
Through this tool, the audience is given more freedom of interpreting the text from
its own view, without any other influence. In the research conducted by Gidengil (2000),
he employed a table regarding the use of reporting verbs and their degree of affection. In
this table many different reporting verbs are scaled according to their degree of affection,
in which the lower the score, the more the negative effect. Following this line of research,
I have also employed the same to study the scale of neutrality or aggressiveness of the
verbs found in the present research, to eventually evaluate how Hillary is portrayed in the
media.
As mentioned in the Theoretical Background section, this list establishes that say
has mostly a neutral affect. In this case, the reported speech is just a direct description of
what the politician has said, since in most of the cases the part of the speech that is
reported by the author is taken directly from the source text, which can be identified
through the inverted commas that distinguish the part of the text that belongs to the female
politician, from the part of the text that belongs to the own production of the writer.
(53) I’m not running for some Americans, but for all Americans,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I’m
running for all Americans.”
(54) “Today, you sent a message: In America, when we stand together, there is no barrier too
big to break,” Clinton said.
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(55) “I will stand up for our companies in Ohio and across America,” Mrs. Clinton said.
As can be observed, in most of the cases the parts of the speech reported here are
related to the image of unity that Hillary constantly addresses in her speeches, and this
seems to show that her self-characterization found in her speeches is not ignored in the
media representation. In the reported speech it is seen how she explains that she is running
“for all Americans”, in a country where “there is no barrier too big to break”. These ideas
reinforce positively the public image of Hillary and represents her as somebody who
believes in the nation and as the candidate who can make change possible. In addition,
the same happens with the use of the verb add, which is used for reporting with neutral
connotations on the speech of Hillary about “unity”.
(56) Mrs. Clinton said many Americans must be asking, “When does my family get
ahead?” She added: “When? I say now.”
Out from the results observed in Graphic 4, the third and fourth most used verbs
are offer and focus. Out from these verbs, only offer was found in the list set by Gidengil
(2000). In the case of the verb offer, it is ascribed the value of 3.77, and thus, is more
inclined towards the positive side, which means that it is most likely to have a positive
effect on the reported speech and thus, the representation of the politician in question.
Then, the use of this reporting verb does not add any negative connotation that could
affect negatively the image of Hillary, on the contrary it is used to portray her as a
candidate that cares about the clarification of issues concerning her campaign and in
addition gives response to the backers of Bernie Sanders by stablishing “fighting
inequality” as one of her priorities. This emphasizes her image as somebody who is not
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afraid of remarking on her personal beliefs as a response to the attacks of supporters of
other parties.
(57) Uncomfortable with the fiery rhetoric of Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts
Democrat, Mrs. Clinton offered some stark statistics to address the concerns of the
Democratic Party’s restless left.
(58) Mrs. Clinton offered her most direct outreach to date to Mr. Sanders’s backers, saying
she shares his priorities like fighting inequality.
Regarding the use of focus, similar results were obtained. Even though it was not
mentioned in the list by Gidengil (2000), through a qualitative analysis it was found that
that this verb is mostly used to report positively on Hillary, as she is portrayed as a
candidate who actually focuses on important issues, such as “the rights of immigrants and
racial injustice”, rather than on criticizing his male counterparts. And finally, her speech
is regarded as “the reflection of the identity politics she has mastered”.
(59) She focused sharply on the general election ahead, said almost nothing critical of Mr.
Sanders and began what may be a long process of unifying the party around her.
(60) Clinton also focused her remarks heavily on the rights of immigrants and on racial
injustice, particularly as she sees it playing out in the polluted drinking water coming
out of taps in homes of the largely African American community of Flint, Mich.
Regarding the use of tell, similar as in the case of say, tell is also considered as
one of the most preferred reporting verbs used in the media (Cappon 1991), since it is
more neutral and reports directly without adding any further connotation, which can be
observed in the following examples.
(61) “The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch, and victory is in sight!”
Mrs. Clinton told cheering supporters Tuesday in New York City
Finally, regarding the verb pledge, it is rated with 3.81, that is to say that its
affection is more likely to be positive or neutral (Gidengil, 2000). This verb is usually
used to emphasize the notion of a more serious and formal promise. However, the
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connotations it holds need to be analyzed also in context. And as can be seen in the sample
below, the verb pledge is used to portray the meaning that the female politician has made
a serious promise, and highlights her personality as a politician who looks for an
“inclusive” campaign and economy, contrary to what other Republican Party support.
This also emphasizes the idea of Hillary as being “the better option” to be elected
as president, since she follows an inclusive campaign towards equality, while the other
Republican Party does not support this measurement. Taking into account that the
Republican Party is mostly represented by Mr. Trump, the comparison between both
politicians results positive for Hillary and negative for Trump, since her measurements
are highlighted as better against the “failed” ideology behind the Republican party.
(62) Mrs. Clinton pledged to run an inclusive campaign and to create a more inclusive
economy, saying that even the new voices in the Republican Party continued to push
“the top-down economic policies that failed us before.”
In general terms, in the results obtained from this analysis, the reporting verbs used
for reporting the speech of the female politician, are more neutral than expected. Given
the results obtained from previous research, more negative connotations and a much more
critical stance in the media were expected initially to be found. Although, not all the verbs
were mentioned in the list set by Gidengil (2000), in all the cases the reporting verbs were
used with positive or neutral connotations, as it was accurately described by Gidengil. All
these verbs ascribed a positive connotation for the interpretation of Hillary, and were used
to report on different issues Hillary has delivered speeches about, issues of concern such
as military, economic and healthcare. In addition, the results reported here parallel the
pattern found in previous research (see Gidengil 2000), in which the most commonly used
verb was say.
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Now, having examined all the data through different tools, such as CDA, word
frequency and pronoun and reporting verbs choice, the results obtained here revealed that
nowadays there is predominantly a positive evaluation of Hillary Clinton in the media,
and thus, this could reveal a new situation for female politicians within society. The
representation of Hillary Clinton was less stereotyped and biased by gender schemas than
it was found in previous research on other female politicians. However, the situation of
women considered as inferior to other male counterparts is still present and is yet to be
fully eradicated. In addition, this situation seems to be also present in the own discursive
performance of the female politician analyzed, who was found to have a tendency to share
credit of her own triumphs with her audience. Nonetheless, she preponderantly
characterizes herself as an “experienced” and powerful woman, who is as competent as
the other male candidates to be elected as president.
5. CONCLUSION
The present study focused on two primary research objectives. One was to identify
the self-characterization of a female politician, Hillary Clinton, as a woman and as a
politician, in order to examine to what extent her self-representation reinforces gender
stereotyping or the idea of women as empowered. In relation to this, the second objective
was to analyze the media representation of the speeches and the performance of the same
politician, in order to finally identify whether this representation is gender biased. In other
words, this study was designed to analyze self-characterization and then compare these
results with the ones obtained from the media representation analysis and see whether
there are issues in the self-characterization of the politician that could affect for the
positive or negative media representation.
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Overall, the data provide both quantitative and qualitative evidence that the
situation of gender stereotypes has diminished in comparison to the results from previous
research and that the context has a major effect on the improvement of the situation for
women, since nowadays there is a growth in female presence in many spheres of society,
even in politics, which has been for a long time male-dominated. However, some
gendered conventions are still to be fully eradicated since in the speeches of the female
politician as much as in the media representation, some gender schemas seem to condition
the way Hillary Clinton represents herself and is represented, such as her tendency to
share credit with others and the media representation of her as “evil” and “incompetent”
even when compared to other male politicians, such as Bernie Sanders who is also a
democrat as Hillary. In line with the hypotheses mentioned in the introduction section,
gender stereotypes nowadays are less dominant than decades ago when referring to the
performance of a female politician in the media. As a result, this facilitates the
interpretation and the positive public image of the politician, who in most of the cases in
even estimated more positively than other male political candidates. However, gender
schemas are still present both in the speeches and in the media representation.
More precisely, in the first analysis conducted on the speeches of Hillary Clinton,
focused on the evaluation of the self-characterization of the politician as a woman and as
a politician, it was found that she tends to use a wide range of sources to reinforce her
public image as an empowered woman and as a competent candidate. First, the results
revealed that Hillary uses a comparative frame for herself in relation to other influential
male political candidates. Specifically, she compared herself to Bernie Sanders, Donald
Trump and Obama. In this sense, she characterizes herself through the comparison with
other male candidates, in order to describe herself as being equally competitive as
president Obama and Sanders, and as a better solution in comparison with other less
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desired male politicians, as Trump. Moreover, some of the key words she uses to
characterize herself are “experience” and “progression”, as she constantly mentions her
long experience in politics as a way of characterizing herself as a competent and
experienced candidate. Taking into account that even though nowadays the situation is
much more positive for women, areas such as politics are still male-dominated and then
women still need to fight for equality in many areas of society. In view of this situation
Hillary appeals to her identity as a woman and uses in all of her speeches examples of
powerful women who have influenced her. However, she does not do this as a way of
assuring her candidacy as the best option just for the sake of being a woman, but to
reinforce the idea that she is at the same level as other candidates, regardless of gender,
but for her own traits and experience. Nonetheless, regarding the analysis on the pronoun
choice on the speeches of Hillary Clinton, it was revealed that to some extent she does
tend to “accommodate” her speech and shares her triumphs with her audience (McElhinny
1995). However, at the same time, analyzing these results in context, since the idea of
“unity” is so sensitive and has been affected by the politic and global economic crisis,
then in that case this issue would be explained as a tool used by the politician as a way of
constructing the image of her campaign as the representation of hope.
On the other hand, the results obtained from the second analysis reported that
there was a great deal of positive evaluation and representation of Hillary Clinton in
comparison to what the results from previous research on media representation of female
politicians showed. Besides, regarding the use of reporting verbs, similar results were
obtained. The reporting verbs were mostly used with neutral or positive connotations, and
reinforced her positive representation to the public. Nonetheless, still in some cases
Hillary was addressed as inferior to Bernie and considered as “evil” and put in the same
level as Trump, even though at least in the case of Bernie Sanders both are democrats,
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share man ideologies in common, thus, Hillary herself mentions many times how she
believes that there is much more that unites them than divides them. Another remarkable
result showed that, since the data analyzed consisted on news articles, and thus, its nature
tends to be more objective, in some cases the author actually makes evaluation of Hillary
by citing what other people say about her. However, there were also instances, in which
the producers of the news reports gave their personal opinion about Hillary. Still these
opinions were preponderantly positive.
The results reported here lead to the confirmation of the initial hypotheses, since
according to what was expected, generally speaking, the situation of gender schemas and
their influence on media presentation and self-characterization have diminished
considerably in comparison to the results obtained from previous research. However,
since the analyses have been conducted only on Hillary Clinton, this could not be assessed
as a generalization of the positive situation for all the female politicians.
Furthermore, through the present research and the results obtained here, it can be
observed that there is a close relationship between the way the political representative
characterizes herself and the representation that is made of her in the media. In her
speeches Hillary Clinton tends to compare herself to other male politicians, and this same
comparison is regarded in the articles. Nonetheless, the comparison in the media is not
the same as in the characterization found in her own discourse, since in her speeches, she
regarded herself as being at the same level as Bernie and did not criticize him negatively,
while in the media presentation she is regarded as better prepared and experienced than
Sanders. In addition, the increase of positive evaluation of the politician seems to be based
on the fact that she characterizes herself as a powerful and experienced woman. Also, due
to her long experience within politics, it facilitates the increase of positive evaluation of
the female politician. In other words, as an answer to the initial research questions
72
regarding to what extent the relationship between the self-characterization and the media
representation of the same politician is portrayed through gender schemas. The results
have revealed that media representation is actually a reflection not only of the mainstream
ideology and mental categorizations, but also is based on the self-representation of the
politician that is being reported. In this sense, in the speeches of Hillary, it was found that
she tends to “accommodate” her discourse to share her triumphs with others, by using the
pronoun “we” in its inclusive form significantly higher in comparison with the instances
in which she uses the pronoun “I”, which was mostly used to deliver her gratitude for
being supported and about her personal and labor experiences. However, it is important
to mention that since unity is one of the issues of concern nowadays, it seems plausible
the idea that she frequently wants to deliver that image of unity her campaign wants to
portray, by sharing her actions with others. Then, further research should be conducted in
this area in order to finally understand the actual reasons underlying her
“accommodation” and preference for using the pronoun “we” instead of “I”, as a tool for
decreasing the negative interpretation of her.
There are a number of limitations to this study which might be usefully addressed
in further research. Aside from the small sample size, which fails to give significant
results, further investigations are needed to determine whether the positive context for
Hillary Clinton in the political sphere can be also found in further research on the situation
of other female politicians. Further work could address the personal opinion of real
people, rather than just focusing on media representation. An anonymous questionnaire
could be employed to find out the personal opinion on a group of male politicians in
comparison with another group of female politicians, in order to analyze whether the
opinions are gender biased and in which ways the gender of the politician could affect to
the voter’s decisions. Such investigations should provide additional insight into the
73
processes of gender issues and how these affect politicians and society in general within
the political sphere.
It is hoped that the present study will serve as a source for further and broader
research on feminist CDA on gender issues, creating more complete theories regarding
the employment of gender stereotypes in the political context, and its implications for the
politicians’ public image. As we continue to investigate this phenomenon, it will become
increasingly important to understand from a wider perspective the real effects of gender
schemas on male and female politicians, as in a society that is constantly developing, it is
important to leave behind once for all the gendered conventionalism that have for a long
time suppressed women. To sum up, there is still a long journey ahead of research to be
conducted in this field, and even more to be discovered.
74
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7. APPENDIXES
Words
Frequency
America
133
country
96
together
68
Americans
64
president
58
children
45
future
39
job
38
women
36
build
35
security
34
barriers
29
Obama
22
health
21
men
20
progress
13
Sanders
6
Trump
5
Table 5. Content words and their word frequency found in the speeches of Hillary Clinton.
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Word frequency in the media
Word frequency in the speeches
Words
Frequency
Words
Frequency
Clinton
219
America
133
Sanders
143
country
96
Hillary
34
together
68
Win
32
Americans
64
Obama
31
president
58
President
25
children
45
Trump
25
future
39
Americans
15
job
38
America
14
women
36
United
14
build
35
attacks
9
security
34
Better
9
barriers
29
experience
9
Obama
22
change
6
health
21
progressive
6
men
20
together
6
progress
13
Tough
6
Sanders
6
criticism
5
Trump
5
Table 6. Word frequency in media representation of Hillary Clinton in comparison with the
most frequently used content words of the speech analysis.
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Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Launch Speech
Date: 13.06.2015
Thank you! Oh, thank you all! Thank you so very, very much. It is wonderful to be here with all
of you. To be in New York with my family, with so many friends, including many New Yorkers
who gave me the honor of serving them in the Senate for eight years. To be right across the water
from the headquarters of the United Nations, where I represented our country many times. To be
here in this beautiful park dedicated to Franklin Roosevelt’s enduring vision of America, the
nation we want to be. And in a place… with absolutely no ceilings.
You know, President Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms are a testament to our nation’s unmatched
aspirations and a reminder of our unfinished work at home and abroad. His legacy lifted up a
nation and inspired presidents who followed. One is the man I served as Secretary of State, Barack
Obama, and another is my husband, Bill Clinton.
Two Democrats guided by the — Oh, that will make him so happy. They were and are two
Democrats guided by the fundamental American belief that real and lasting prosperity must be
built by all and shared by all.
President Roosevelt called on every American to do his or her part, and every American answered.
He said there’s no mystery about what it takes to build a strong and prosperous America: “Equality
of opportunity… Jobs for those who can work… Security for those who need it… The ending of
special privilege for the few… The preservation of civil liberties for all… a wider and constantly
rising standard of living.” That still sounds good to me.
It’s America’s basic bargain. If you do your part you ought to be able to get ahead. And when
everybody does their part, America gets ahead too. That bargain inspired generations of families,
including my own. It’s what kept my grandfather going to work in the same Scranton lace mill
every day for 50 years. It’s what led my father to believe that if he scrimped and saved, his small
business printing drapery fabric in Chicago could provide us with a middle-class life. And it did.
When President Clinton honored the bargain, we had the longest peacetime expansion in history,
a balanced budget, and the first time in decades we all grew together, with the bottom 20 percent
of workers increasing their incomes by the same percentage as the top 5 percent. When President
Obama honored the bargain, we pulled back from the brink of Depression, saved the auto industry,
provided health care to 16 million working people, and replaced the jobs we lost faster than after
a financial crash.
But, it’s not 1941, or 1993, or even 2009. We face new challenges in our economy and our
democracy. We’re still working our way back from a crisis that happened because time-tested
values were replaced by false promises. Instead of an economy built by every American, for every
American, we were told that if we let those at the top pay lower taxes and bend the rules, their
success would trickle down to everyone else.
What happened? Well, instead of a balanced budget with surpluses that could have eventually
paid off our national debt, the Republicans twice cut taxes for the wealthiest, borrowed money
from other countries to pay for two wars, and family incomes dropped. You know where we ended
up. Except it wasn’t the end. As we have since our founding, Americans made a new beginning.
You worked extra shifts, took second jobs, postponed home repairs… you figured out how to
make it work. And now people are beginning to think about their future again – going to college,
starting a business, buying a house, finally being able to put away something for retirement. So
we’re standing again. But, we all know we’re not yet running the way America should. You see
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corporations making record profits, with CEOs making record pay, but your paychecks have
barely budged. While many of you are working multiple jobs to make ends meet, you see the top
25 hedge fund managers making more than all of America’s kindergarten teachers combined.
And, often paying a lower tax rate. So, you have to wonder: “When does my hard work pay off?
When does my family get ahead?” “When?” I say now. Prosperity can’t be just for CEOs and
hedge fund managers.
Democracy can’t be just for billionaires and corporations. Prosperity and democracy are part of
your basic bargain too. You brought our country back. Now it’s time — your time to secure the
gains and move ahead.
And, you know what? America can’t succeed unless you succeed. That is why I am running for
President of the United States. Here, on Roosevelt Island, I believe we have a continuing
rendezvous with destiny. Each American and the country we cherish. I’m running to make our
economy work for you and for every American. For the successful and the struggling. For the
innovators and inventors. For those breaking barriers in technology and discovering cures for
diseases. For the factory workers and food servers who stand on their feet all day. For the nurses
who work the night shift. For the truckers who drive for hours and the farmers who feed us. For
the veterans who served our country. For the small business owners who took a risk. For everyone
who’s ever been knocked down, but refused to be knocked out. I’m not running for some
Americans, but for all Americans.
Our country’s challenges didn’t begin with the Great Recession and they won’t end with the
recovery.
For decades, Americans have been buffeted by powerful currents.
Advances in technology and the rise of global trade have created whole new areas of economic
activity and opened new markets for our exports, but they have also displaced jobs and undercut
wages for millions of Americans. The financial industry and many multi-national corporations
have created huge wealth for a few by focusing too much on short-term profit and too little on
long-term value… too much on complex trading schemes and stock buybacks, too little on
investments in new businesses, jobs, and fair compensation. Our political system is so paralyzed
by gridlock and dysfunction that most Americans have lost confidence that anything can actually
get done. And they’ve lost trust in the ability of both government and Big Business to change
course.
Now, we can blame historic forces beyond our control for some of this, but the choices we’ve
made as a nation, leaders and citizens alike, have also played a big role. Our next President must
work with Congress and every other willing partner across our entire country. And I will do just
that — to turn the tide so these currents start working for us more than against us. At our best,
that’s what Americans do. We’re problem solvers, not deniers. We don’t hide from change, we
harness it. But we can’t do that if we go back to the top-down economic policies that failed us
before. Americans have come too far to see our progress ripped away.
Now, there may be some new voices in the presidential Republican choir, but they’re all singing
the same old song… A song called “Yesterday.”
You know the one — all our troubles look as though they’re here to stay… and we need a place
to hide away… They believe in yesterday.
And you’re lucky I didn’t try singing that, too, I’ll tell you!
These Republicans trip over themselves promising lower taxes for the wealthy and fewer rules
for the biggest corporations without regard for how that will make income inequality even worse.
83
We’ve heard this tune before. And we know how it turns out. Ask many of these candidates about
climate change, one of the defining threats of our time, and they’ll say: “I’m not a scientist.” Well,
then, why don’t they start listening to those who are? They pledge to wipe out tough rules on Wall
Street, rather than rein in the banks that are still too risky, courting future failures. In a case that
can only be considered mass amnesia. They want to take away health insurance from more than
16 million Americans without offering any credible alternative. They shame and blame women,
rather than respect our right to make our own reproductive health decisions. They want to put
immigrants, who work hard and pay taxes, at risk of deportation. And they turn their backs on gay
people who love each other. Fundamentally, they reject what it takes to build an inclusive
economy. It takes an inclusive society. What I once called “a village” that has a place for everyone.
Now, my values and a lifetime of experiences have given me a different vision for America.
I believe that success isn’t measured by how much the wealthiest Americans have, but by how
many children climb out of poverty… How many start-ups and small businesses open and
thrive… How many young people go to college without drowning in debt… How many people
find a good job… How many families get ahead and stay ahead. I didn’t learn this from politics.
I learned it from my own family. My mother taught me that everybody needs a chance and a
champion. She knew what it was like not to have either one.
Her own parents abandoned her, and by 14 she was out on her own, working as a housemaid.
Years later, when I was old enough to understand, I asked what kept her going.
You know what her answer was? Something very simple: Kindness from someone who believed
she mattered.
The 1st grade teacher who saw she had nothing to eat at lunch and, without embarrassing her,
brought extra food to share. The woman whose house she cleaned letting her go to high school so
long as her work got done. That was a bargain she leapt to accept. And, because some people
believed in her, she believed in me. That’s why I believe with all my heart in America and in the
potential of every American. To meet every challenge. To be resilient… no matter what the world
throws at you. To solve the toughest problems. I believe we can do all these things because I’ve
seen it happen.
As a young girl, I signed up at my Methodist Church to babysit the children of Mexican
farmworkers, while their parents worked in the fields on the weekends. And later, as a law student,
I advocated for Congress to require better working and living conditions for farm workers whose
children deserved better opportunities. My first job out of law school was for the Children’s
Defense Fund. I walked door-to-door to find out how many children with disabilities couldn’t go
to school, and to help build the case for a law guaranteeing them access to education.
As a leader of the Legal Services Corporation, I defended the right of poor people to have a lawyer.
And saw lives changed because an abusive marriage ended or an illegal eviction stopped. In
Arkansas, I supervised law students who represented clients in courts and prisons, organized
scholarships for single parents going to college, led efforts for better schools and health care, and
personally knew the people whose lives were improved. As Senator, I had the honor of
representing brave firefighters, police officers, EMTs, construction workers, and volunteers who
ran toward danger on 9/11 and stayed there, becoming sick themselves.
It took years of effort, but Congress finally approved the health care they needed.
There are so many faces and stories that I carry with me of people who gave their best and then
needed help themselves. Just weeks ago, I met another person like that, a single mom juggling a
job and classes at community college, while raising three kids.
She doesn’t expect anything to come easy. But she did ask me: What more can be done so it
isn’t quite so hard for families like hers? I want to be her champion and your champion. If you’ll
give me the chance, I’ll wage and win Four Fights for you. The first is to make the economy
84
work for everyday Americans, not just those at the top. To make the middle class mean
something again, with rising incomes and broader horizons. And to give the poor a chance to
work their way into it. The middle class needs more growth and more fairness. Growth and
fairness go together. For lasting prosperity, you can’t have one without the other. Is this possible
in today’s world?
I believe it is or I wouldn’t be standing here.
Do I think it will be easy? Of course not.
But, here’s the good news: There are allies for change everywhere who know we can’t stand by
while inequality increases, wages stagnate, and the promise of America dims. We should welcome
the support of all Americans who want to go forward together with us. There are public officials
who know Americans need a better deal.
Business leaders who want higher pay for employees, equal pay for women and no discrimination
against the LGBT community either. There are leaders of finance who want less short-term trading
and more long-term investing. There are union leaders who are investing their own pension funds
in putting people to work to build tomorrow’s economy. We need everyone to come to the table
and work with us. In the coming weeks, I’ll propose specific policies to:
Reward businesses who invest in long term value rather than the quick buck – because that leads
to higher growth for the economy, higher wages for workers, and yes, bigger profits, everybody
will have a better time.
I will rewrite the tax code so it rewards hard work and investments here at home, not quick trades
or stashing profits overseas. I will give new incentives to companies that give their employees a
fair share of the profits their hard work earns. We will unleash a new generation of entrepreneurs
and small business owners by providing tax relief, cutting red tape, and making it easier to get a
small business loan. We will restore America to the cutting edge of innovation, science, and
research by increasing both public and private investments. And we will make America the clean
energy superpower of the 21st century. Developing renewable power – wind, solar, advanced
biofuels… Building cleaner power plants, smarter electric grids, greener buildings…
Using additional fees and royalties from fossil fuel extraction to protect the environment… And
ease the transition for distressed communities to a more diverse and sustainable economic future
from coal country to Indian country, from small towns in the Mississippi Delta to the Rio Grande
Valley to our inner cities, we have to help our fellow Americans. Now, this will create millions
of jobs and countless new businesses, and enable America to lead the global fight against climate
change. We will also connect workers to their jobs and businesses. Customers will have a better
chance to actually get where they need and get what they desire with roads, railways, bridges,
airports, ports, and broadband brought up to global standards for the 21st century. We will establish
an infrastructure bank and sell bonds to pay for some of these improvements.
Now, building an economy for tomorrow also requires investing in our most important asset, our
people, beginning with our youngest.
That’s why I will propose that we make preschool and quality childcare available to every child
in America.
And I want you to remember this, because to me, this is absolutely the most-compelling argument
why we should do this. Research tells us how much early learning in the first five years of life can
impact lifelong success. In fact, 80 percent of the brain is developed by age three.
One thing I’ve learned is that talent is universal – you can find it anywhere – but opportunity is
not. Too many of our kids never have the chance to learn and thrive as they should and as we need
them to. Our country won’t be competitive or fair if we don’t help more families give their kids
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the best possible start in life. So let’s staff our primary and secondary schools with teachers who
are second to none in the world, and receive the respect they deserve for sparking the love of
learning in every child. Let’s make college affordable and available to all …and lift the crushing
burden of student debt. Let’s provide lifelong learning for workers to gain or improve skills the
economy requires, setting up many more Americans for success. Now, the second fight is to
strengthen America’s families, because when our families are strong, America is strong. And
today’s families face new and unique pressures. Parents need more support and flexibility to do
their job at work and at home. I believe you should have the right to earn paid sick days.
I believe you should receive your work schedule with enough notice to arrange childcare or take
college courses to get ahead. I believe you should look forward to retirement with confidence, not
anxiety. That you should have the peace of mind that your health care will be there when you
need it, without breaking the bank. I believe we should offer paid family leave so no one has to
choose between keeping a paycheck and caring for a new baby or a sick relative. And it is way
past time to end the outrage of so many women still earning less than men on the job — and
women of color often making even less. This isn’t a women’s issue. It’s a family issue. Just like
raising the minimum wage is a family issue. Expanding childcare is a family issue. Declining
marriage rates is a family issue. The unequal rates of incarceration is a family issue. Helping more
people with an addiction or a mental health problem get help is a family issue.
In America, every family should feel like they belong. So we should offer hard-working,
lawabiding immigrant families a path to citizenship. Not second-class status. And, we should ban
discrimination against LGBT Americans and their families so they can live, learn, marry, and
work just like everybody else. You know, America’s diversity, our openness, our devotion to
human rights and freedom is what’s drawn so many to our shores. What’s inspired people all over
the world. I know. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And these are also qualities that prepare us well
for the demands of a world that is more interconnected than ever before. So we have a third fight:
to harness all of America’s power, smarts, and values to maintain our leadership for peace,
security, and prosperity. No other country on Earth is better positioned to thrive in the 21st century.
No other country is better equipped to meet traditional threats from countries like Russia, North
Korea, and Iran – and to deal with the rise of new powers like China.
No other country is better prepared to meet emerging threats from cyber attacks, transnational
terror networks like ISIS, and diseases that spread across oceans and continents. As your
President, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Americans safe. And if you look over my left shoulder
you can see the new World Trade Center soaring skyward. As a Senator from New York, I
dedicated myself to getting our city and state the help we needed to recover. And as a member of
the Armed Services Committee, I worked to maintain the best-trained, best-equipped, strongest
military, ready for today’s threats and tomorrow’s. And when our brave men and women come
home from war or finish their service, I’ll see to it that they get not just the thanks of a grateful
nation, but the care and benefits they’ve earned.
I’ve stood up to adversaries like Putin and reinforced allies like Israel. I was in the Situation Room
on the day we got bin Laden.
But, I know — I know we have to be smart as well as strong.
Meeting today’s global challenges requires every element of America’s power, including skillful
diplomacy, economic influence, and building partnerships to improve lives around the world with
people, not just their governments. There are a lot of trouble spots in the world, but there’s a lot
of good news out there too. I believe the future holds far more opportunities than threats if we
exercise creative and confident leadership that enables us to shape global events rather than be
shaped by them. And we all know that in order to be strong in the world, though, we first have to
be strong at home. That’s why we have to win the fourth fight – reforming our government and
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revitalizing our democracy so that it works for everyday Americans. We have to stop the endless
flow of secret, unaccountable money that is distorting our elections, corrupting our political
process, and drowning out the voices of our people.
We need Justices on the Supreme Court who will protect every citizen’s right to vote, rather than
every corporation’s right to buy elections. If necessary, I will support a constitutional amendment
to undo the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. I want to make it easier for every citizen
to vote. That’s why I’ve proposed universal, automatic registration and expanded early voting.
I’ll fight back against Republican efforts to disempower and disenfranchise young people, poor
people, people with disabilities, and people of color.
What part of democracy are they afraid of?
No matter how easy we make it to vote, we still have to give Americans something worth voting
for. Government is never going to have all the answers – but it has to be smarter, simpler, more
efficient, and a better partner. That means access to advanced technology so government agencies
can more effectively serve their customers, the American people. We need expertise and
innovation from the private sector to help cut waste and streamline services. There’s so much that
works in America. For every problem we face, someone somewhere in America is solving it.
Silicon Valley cracked the code on sharing and scaling a while ago. Many states are pioneering
new ways to deliver services. I want to help Washington catch up. To do that, we need a political
system that produces results by solving problems that hold us back, not one overwhelmed by
extreme partisanship and inflexibility.
Now, I’ll always seek common ground with friend and opponent alike. But I’ll also stand my
ground when I must. That’s something I did as Senator and Secretary of State — whether it was
working with Republicans to expand health care for children and for our National Guard, or
improve our foster care and adoption system, or pass a treaty to reduce the number of Russian
nuclear warheads that could threaten our cities — and it’s something I will always do as your
President.
We Americans may differ, bicker, stumble, and fall; but we are at our best when we pick each
other up, when we have each other’s back. Like any family, our American family is strongest
when we cherish what we have in common, and fight back against those who would drive us apart.
People all over the world have asked me: “How could you and President Obama work together
after you fought so hard against each other in that long campaign?”
Now, that is an understandable question considering that in many places, if you lose an election
you could get imprisoned or exiled – even killed – not hired as Secretary of State. But President
Obama asked me to serve, and I accepted because we both love our country. That’s how we do it
in America.
With that same spirit, together, we can win these four fights.
We can build an economy where hard work is rewarded.
We can strengthen our families.
We can defend our country and increase our opportunities all over the world.
And we can renew the promise of our democracy.
If we all do our part. In our families, in our businesses, unions, houses of worship, schools, and,
yes, in the voting booth. I want you to join me in this effort. Help me build this campaign and
make it your own. Talk to your friends, your family, your neighbors.
Text “JOIN” J-O-I-N to 4-7-2-4-6.
Go to hillaryclinton.com and sign up to make calls and knock on doors.
It’s no secret that we’re going up against some pretty powerful forces that will do and spend
whatever it takes to advance a very different vision for America. But I’ve spent my life fighting
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for children, families, and our country. And I’m not stopping now. You know, I know how hard
this job is. I’ve seen it up close and personal. All our Presidents come into office looking so
vigorous. And then we watch their hair grow grayer and grayer. Well, I may not be the youngest
candidate in this race. But I will be the youngest woman President in the history of the United
States!
And the first grandmother as well.
And one additional advantage: You’re won’t see my hair turn white in the White House. I’ve been
coloring it for years! So I’m looking forward to a great debate among Democrats, Republicans,
and Independents. I’m not running to be a President only for those Americans who already agree
with me. I want to be a President for all Americans. And along the way, I’ll just let you in on this
little secret. I won’t get everything right. Lord knows I’ve made my share of mistakes. Well,
there’s no shortage of people pointing them out! And I certainly haven’t won every battle I’ve
fought. But leadership means perseverance and hard choices. You have to push through the
setbacks and disappointments and keep at it.
I think you know by now that I’ve been called many things by many people — “quitter” is not
one of them. Like so much else in my life, I got this from my mother.
When I was a girl, she never let me back down from any bully or barrier. In her later years, Mom
lived with us, and she was still teaching me the same lessons. I’d come home from a hard day at
the Senate or the State Department, sit down with her at the small table in our breakfast nook, and
just let everything pour out. And she would remind me why we keep fighting, even when the odds
are long and the opposition is fierce.
I can still hear her saying: “Life’s not about what happens to you, it’s about what you do with
what happens to you – so get back out there.”
She lived to be 92 years old, and I often think about all the battles she witnessed over the course
of the last century — all the progress that was won because Americans refused to give up or back
down.
She was born on June 4, 1919 — before women in America had the right to vote. But on that very
day, after years of struggle, Congress passed the Constitutional Amendment that would change
that forever.
The story of America is a story of hard-fought, hard-won progress. And it continues today. New
chapters are being written by men and women who believe that all of us – not just some, but all –
should have the chance to live up to our God-given potential.
Not only because we’re a tolerant country, or a generous country, or a compassionate country, but
because we’re a better, stronger, more prosperous country when we harness the talent, hard work,
and ingenuity of every single American. I wish my mother could have been with us longer. I wish
she could have seen Chelsea become a mother herself. I wish she could have met Charlotte. I wish
she could have seen the America we’re going to build together.
An America, where if you do your part, you reap the rewards. Where we don’t leave anyone out,
or anyone behind. An America where a father can tell his daughter: yes, you can be anything
you want to be. Even President of the United States.
Thank you all. God bless you. And may God bless America.
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Hillary Clinton Lays Out Comprehensive Plan To Bolster Homeland Security Date:
15.12.2015
Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. I’m delighted to be here at this
great university, one of the premier public institutions of higher education in our entire country.
Yes, indeed. Just, you know, one of those statements of fact that deserves a response. I want to
thank my longtime friend, Vice President Mondale, for his kind words. His support in this
campaign means a great deal to me personally, because I admire so much his service to our
country. He is a great Minnesotan and a great American, and we’re so privileged to have him
with us today.
I also want to acknowledge a few of the other elected officials who are here. I am, of course
absolutely delighted to be joined by former colleagues and friends, your senators, Amy Klobuchar
and Al Franken, who are quite the dynamic duo for your state. And I am grateful to them for
everything they’re doing and for their help and support of my campaign. I also want to thank Tina
Smith, your lieutenant governor, and Steve Simon, your secretary of state. And I understand that
Betsy Hodges is here, Mayor of Minneapolis. And I also want to acknowledge the dean of the
Humphries School, Eric Schwartz. Eric was my top advisor on refugee issues at the State
Department. I also had the great privilege of working with him when he was on the National
Security Council during my husband’s administration. You know, he brings a mix of expertise
and empathy that has been conspicuously missing from much of our public debate.
And I am grateful he is here today, but I’m also a little jealous that all of you here at the university
get to have the benefit of his experience. You know, over the past several months, I have listened
to the problems that keep American families up at night. Now, most people don’t expect life to
be easy, but they do want more security, a good-paying job that lets you afford a middle class
lifestyle, health care you can count on, a little bit put away for your retirement. Being secure also
means being safe, safe at home, at school, at work. And today, I want to talk about how we keep
our country safe from a threat that’s on everyone’s minds, the threat of terrorism. But I want to
begin by saying, we cannot give in to fear. We can’t let it stop us from doing what is right and
necessary to make us safe, and doing it in way that is consistent with our values.
We cannot let fear push us into reckless actions that end up making us less safe. Americans are
going to have to act with both courage and clarity. Now, as we all know, on December 2nd, two
shooters killed 14 people at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California. Sadly, in America in
2015, turning on the news and hearing about a mass shooting is not unusual. But this one turned
out to be different, because these killers were a husband and wife inspired by ISIS. Americans
have experienced terrorism before. On 9/11, we learned that terrorists in Afghanistan could strike
our homeland. From Fort Hood to Chattanooga to the Boston Marathon, we saw people
radicalized here carrying out deadly attacks.
But San Bernardino felt different. Maybe it was the timing, coming so soon after Paris. Maybe
it was how random it seemed, a terrorist attack in a suburban office park, not a high-profile target
or symbol of American power. It made us all feel it could have been anywhere, at any time. The
phrase “active shooter” should not be one we have to teach our children. But it is. And now we
are all grappling with what all this means for our future, for our safety, our sense of well-being,
and our trust and connections with our neighbors. We want to be open-hearted, and we want to
celebrate America’s diversity, not fear it. And while we know the overwhelming majority of
people here and around the world hate ISIS and love peace, we do have to be prepared for more
terrorists plotting attacks. Just yesterday, a man in Maryland was charged with receiving
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thousands of dollars from ISIS for use in planning an attack. And here in Minnesota, authorities
have charged ten men with conspiring to provide material support to ISIS.
But in the Twin Cities, you have also seen firsthand how communities come together to resist
radicalization: local imams condemning terrorist violence, local artists and activists pushing back
against terrorist propaganda. I just met with a group of community leaders who told me about
some of the work and the challenges that they are dealing with. As the first Somali-American
police sergeant in Minnesota, and probably in the country, said recently, “Safety is a shared
responsibility, so we have to work together.”
The threat we face is daunting. But America has overcome big challenges many times before.
Throughout our history, we’ve stared into the face of evil and refused to blink. We beat Fascism,
won the Cold War, brought Osama bin Laden to justice. So no one should ever underestimate the
determination of the American people. And I am confident we will once again choose resolve
over fear. And we will defeat these new enemies, just as we’ve defeated those who’ve threatened
us in the past.
Because it is not enough to contain ISIS, we must defeat ISIS, break its momentum and then its
back. And not just ISIS, but the broader radical jihadist movement that also includes al Qaeda
and offshoots like al Shabaab in Somalia. Now, waging and winning this fight will require serious
leadership. But unfortunately, our political debate has been anything but serious.
We can’t afford another major ground war in the Middle East. That’s exactly what ISIS wants
from us. Shallow slogans don’t add up to a strategy. Promising to carpet bomb until the desert
glows doesn’t make you sound strong, it makes you sound like you’re in over your head. Bluster
and bigotry are not credentials for becoming Commander-in-Chief.
And it is hard to take seriously senators who talk tough but then hold up key national security
nominations, including the top official at the Treasury Department responsible for disrupting
terrorist financing. Every day that’s wasted on partisan gridlock could put Americans in danger.
So, yes, we need a serious discussion. And that’s why in a speech last month before the Council
on Foreign Relations I laid out a three-part plan to defeat ISIS and the broader extremist
movement.
One, defeat ISIS in the Middle East by smashing its stronghold, hitting its fighters, leaders, and
infrastructure from the air, and intensifying support for local forces who can pursue them on the
ground. Second, defeat them around the world by dismantling the global network of terror that
supplies radical jihadists with money, arms, propaganda, and fighters. And third, defeat them here
at home by foiling plots, disrupting radicalization, and hardening our defenses. Now, these three
lines of effort reinforce one another. So we need to pursue all of them at once, using every pillar
of American power. It will require skillful diplomacy to continue Secretary Kerry’s efforts to
encourage political reconciliation in Iraq and political transition in Syria, enabling more Sunni
Arabs and Kurdish fighters to take on ISIS on both sides of the border, and to get our Arab and
Turkish partners to actually step up and do their part.
It will require more U.S. and allied airpower, and a broader target set for strikes by planes and
drones, with proper safeguards. It will require Special Operations units to advise and train local
forces and conduct key counterterrorism missions.
What it will not require is tens of thousands of American combat troops. That is not the right
action for us to take in this situation. So there is a lot to do, and today, I want to focus on the third
part of my plan, how we defend our country and prevent radicalization here at home. We need a
comprehensive strategy to counter each step in the process that can lead to an attack like the one
in San Bernardino. First, we have to shut down ISIS recruitment in the United States, especially
online. Second, stop would-be jihadists from getting training overseas, and stop foreign terrorists
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from coming here. Third, discover and disrupt plots before they can be carried out. Fourth, support
law enforcement officers who risk their lives to prevent and respond to attacks. And fifth,
empower our Muslim-American communities, who are on the front-lines of the fight against
radicalization. This is a 360-degree strategy to keep America safe, and I want to walk through
each of the elements, from recruitment to training to planning to execution.
First, shutting down recruitment. We have to stop jihadists from radicalizing new recruits
inperson and through social media, chat rooms, and what’s called the “Dark Web.” To do that,
we need stronger relationships between Washington, Silicon Valley, and all of our great tech
companies and entrepreneurs. American innovation is a powerful force, and we have to put it to
work defeating ISIS. That starts with understanding where and how recruitment happens. Our
security professionals need to more effectively track and analyze ISIS’s social media posts and
map jihadist networks, and they need help from the tech community. Companies should redouble
their efforts to maintain and enforce their own service agreements and other necessary policies to
police their networks, identifying extremist content and removing it. Now, many are already doing
this, and sharing those best practices more widely is important.
At the State Department, I started an interagency center to combat violent jihadist messages, to
have a better way to communicate on behalf of our values, and to give young people drawn to
those messages an alternative narrative. We recruited specialists fluent in Arabic, Urdu, and
Somali to wage online battles with extremists to counter their propaganda. Now, those efforts
have not kept pace with the threat, so we need to step up our game, in partnership with the private
sector and credible moderate voices outside government. But that’s just some of what we have to
do. Experts from the FBI, the intelligence community, Homeland Security, DOD, the State
Department, and the technology industry should work together to develop a unified national
strategy to defeat ISIS in cyberspace, using all of our capabilities to deny jihadists virtual territory,
just as we work to deny them actual territory.
And at the same time, we also have to do more to address the challenge of radicalization, whatever
form it takes. It’s imperative that the Saudis, the Qataris, the Kuwaitis and others stop their citizens
from supporting radical schools, madrassas and mosques around the world, once and for all, and
that should be the top priority in all of our discussions with these countries. Now, second, we have
to prevent ISIS recruits from training abroad, and prevent foreign jihadists from coming here.
Most urgent is stemming the flow of fighters from Europe and America to Iraq and Syria, and
then back home again. The United States and our allies need to know the identities of every fighter
who makes that trip, and then share information with each other in real time. Right now, European
nations don’t always alert each other when they turn away a suspected extremist at the border or
when a passport is stolen. They have to dramatically improve intelligence sharing and
counterterrorism cooperation. And we’re ready to help them do that.
We also need to take down the network of enablers who help jihadists finance and facilitate their
travel, forge documents, and evade detection. And the United States and our allies should commit
to revoke the passports and visas of jihadists who have gone to join ISIS or other groups, and
bring the full force of law against them.
As I’ve said before, the United States has to take a close look at our visa programs. And I am
glad the administration and Congress are stepping up scrutiny in the wake of San Bernardino.
And that should include scrutinizing applicants’ social media postings. We also should dispatch
more Homeland Security agents to high-risk countries to better investigate visa applicants.
For many years, America has waived visa requirements for travelers from countries with reliable
security procedures, including key allies in Europe and Asia. That makes sense. But we also
have to be smart. Except for limited exceptions like diplomats and aid workers, anyone who has
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traveled in the past five years to a country facing serious problems with terrorism and foreign
fighters should have to go through a full visa investigation, no matter where they’re from.
We also have to be vigilant in screening and vetting refugees from Syria, guided by the best
judgment of our security and diplomatic professionals. Rigorous vetting already takes place while
these refugees are still overseas, and it’s a process that historically takes 18 to 24 months. But
Congress needs to provide enough resources to ensure we have sufficient personnel deployed to
run the most thorough possible process. And just as important, we cannot allow terrorists to
intimidate us into abandoning our values and our humanitarian obligations. Turning away
orphans, applying a religious test that discriminates against Muslims, slamming the door on every
single Syrian refugee; that is not who we are. We are better than that.
It would be a cruel irony indeed if ISIS can force families from their homes and then also prevent
them from finding new ones. So after rigorous screening, we should welcome families fleeing
Syria just as the Twin Cities and this state have welcomed previous generations of refugees, exiles,
and immigrants. Of course, the key is to prevent terrorists also from exploiting our compassion
and endangering our security. But we can do this. And I think we must.
Third, we have to discover and disrupt jihadist plots before they can be carried out. This is going
to take better intelligence collection, analysis, and sharing. I’ve proposed an “intelligence surge”
against ISIS that includes more operations officers and linguists, enhancing our technical
surveillance of overseas targets, intercepting terrorist communications, flying more
reconnaissance missions to track terrorists’ movements, and developing even closer partnerships
with other intelligence services.
President Obama recently signed the USA Freedom Act, which was passed by a bipartisan
majority in Congress. It protects civil liberties while maintaining capabilities that our intelligence
and law enforcement agencies need to keep us safe. However, the new law is now under attack
from presidential candidates on the left and right. Some would strip away crucial counterterrorism
tools, even with appropriate judicial and congressional oversight. Others seem eager to go back
to discredited practices of the past. I don’t think we can afford to let either view prevail. Now,
encryption of mobile devices and communications does present a particularly tough problem with
important implications for security and civil liberties. Law enforcement and counterterrorism
professionals warn that impenetrable encryption may make it harder for them to investigate plots
and prevent future attacks. On the other hand, there are very legitimate worries about privacy,
network security, and creating new vulnerabilities that bad actors can exploit.
I know there’s no magic fix to this dilemma that will satisfy all these concerns. But we can’t just
throw up our hands. The tech community and the government have to stop seeing each other as
adversaries and start working together to keep us safe from terrorists. And even as we make sure
law enforcement officials get the tools they need to prevent attacks, it’s essential that we also
make sure jihadists don’t get the tools they need to carry out attacks. It defies common sense that
Republicans in Congress refuse to make it harder for potential terrorists to buy guns. If you’re
too dangerous to fly, you’re too dangerous to buy a gun, period. And we should insist on
comprehensive background checks and close loopholes that allow potential terrorists to buy
weapons online or at gun shows. And I think it’s time to restore the ban on assault weapons and
high capacity magazines.
I know this will drive some of our Republican friends a little crazy. You’ll probably hear it
tonight. They will say that guns are a totally separate issue, nothing to do with terrorism. Well,
I have news for them, terrorists use guns to kill Americans. And I think we should make it a lot
harder for them from to do that ever again. And there’s a question, a question they should be
asked: Why don’t the Republican candidates want to do that? You see, I have this old fashioned
idea that we elect a President in part, in large part, to keep us safe, from terrorists, from gun
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violence, from whatever threatens our families and communities. And I’m not going to let the
gun lobby or anyone else tell me that’s not the right path for us to go down. Now, the fourth
element in my strategy is supporting law enforcement officers who risk their lives to prevent and
respond to terrorist attacks. In San Bernardino, city, county, state, and federal authorities acted
with speed and courage to prevent even more loss of life. Like Detective Jorge Lozano, a 15-year
police veteran, who assured terrified civilians, “I’ll take a bullet before you do.” There is no limit
to the gratitude we owe to law enforcement professionals like that Detective Lozano who run
toward danger to try to save lives. And not just in the immediate wake of an attack. Our police,
firefighters, and emergency responders will keep putting their lives on the line long after the
cameras move on. It’s disgraceful that Congress has thus far failed to keep faith with first
responders suffering from the lasting health effects of 9/11. Many of them were men and women
I was so proud to represent as a Senator from New York. The Zadroga 9/11 Health Act never
should have been allowed to lapse. It looks like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may have
finally dropped his opposition. And I hope the American people will hold him to that. And we
will continue to honor the service and sacrifice of those who responded to the worst terrorist attack
in our history.
We have to make sure that local law enforcement has the resources and training they need to keep
us safe. And they should be more closely synced up with national counterterrorism experts,
including with better use of “fusion centers” that serve as clearinghouses for intelligence and
coordination.
And we need to strengthen our defenses and our resilience wherever we’re vulnerable, whether
it’s “soft targets” like shopping malls or higher-profile targets like airports, railways, or power
plants. We have to build on the progress of the Obama Administration in locking down loose
nuclear materials, and other WMD, so they never fall into the hands of terrorists who seek them
actively around the world. So we should be providing the Department of Homeland Security with
the resources it needs to stay one step ahead, not trying to privatize key functions, like TSA, as
some Republicans have proposed. And it’s important for us to recognize that when we talk about
law enforcement, we have made progress in being sure that our federal authorities share
information with our state and local authorities, but that was an issue I tackled after 9/11, and we
have to stay really vigilant so that information is in the hands where it needs to be.
Finally, the fifth element in the strategy is empowering Muslim-American communities who are
on the front-lines of the fight against radicalization. There are millions of peace-loving Muslims
living, working, raising families, and paying taxes in our country. These Americans may be our
first, last, and best defense against home grown radicalization and terrorism. They are the most
likely to recognize the insidious effects of radicalization before it’s too late, intervene to help set
a young person straight. They are the best positioned to block anything going forward. That’s
why law enforcement has worked so hard since 9/11 to build up trust and strong relationships
within Muslim-American communities. Here in the Twin Cities, you have an innovative
partnership that brings together parents, teachers, imams, and others in the Somali-American
community with law enforcement, non-profits, local businesses, mental health professionals and
others to intervene with young people who are at risk. It’s called the Building Community
Resilience Pilot Program, and it deserves increased support. It has not gotten the financial
resources that it needs to do everything the people involved in it know they can do. And we’ve
got to do a better job of supporting it. Now I know that like many places across the country, there’s
more work to do to increase trust between communities and law enforcement. Just last month, I
know here a young African American man was fatally shot by a police officer. And I understand
an investigation is underway. Whatever the outcome, tragedies like this raise hard questions about
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racial justice in America and put at risk efforts to build the community relationships that help keep
us safe from crime and from terrorism.
When people see that respect and trust are two-way streets, they’re more likely to work hand-in
hand with law enforcement. One of the mothers of the 10 men recently charged with conspiring
with terrorists said, “We have to stop the denial,” she told other parents that. “We have to talk to
our kids and work with the FBI.” That’s a message we need to hear from leaders within Muslim
American communities across our country.
But we also want to highlight the successes in Muslim American communities, and there are so
many of them. I just met with the first Somali-American council member of the City Council
here. And he was proudly telling me how much change Somali immigrants, now MuslimAmericans have made in parts of the city and neighborhoods that had been pretty much hollowed
out. Let’s look at the successes. If we’re going to full integrate everyone into America, then we
need to be seeing all their contributions, too. And that is one of the many reasons why we must
all stand up against offensive, inflammatory, hateful, anti-Muslim rhetoric. You know, not only
do these comments cut against everything we stand for as Americans, they are also dangerous. As
the Director of the FBI told Congress recently, anything that erodes trust with Muslim-Americans
makes the job of law enforcement more difficult. We need every community invested in this
fight, not alienated and sitting on the sidelines.
One of the community leaders I met with told me that a lot of the children in the community are
now afraid to go to school. They’re not only afraid of being perceived as a threat, they are afraid
of being threatened because of who they are. This is such a open-hearted and generous
community, I hope there will be even more efforts perhaps under the aegis of the university and
certainly Governor Dayton and others, to bring people together to reassure members of the
community, particularly children and teenagers that they are welcome, invited and valued here in
this city and state. Now Donald Trump’s proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United
States has rightly sparked outrage across our country and around the world. Even some of the
other Republican candidates are saying he’s gone too far. But the truth is, many of those same
candidates have also said disgraceful things about Muslims. And this kind of divisive rhetoric
actually plays into the hands of terrorists. It alienates partners and undermines moderates we need
around the world in the fight against ISIS.
You know, you hear a lot of talk from some of the other candidates about coalitions. Everyone
seems to want one. But there’s not nearly as much talk about what it actually takes to build a
coalition and make it work. I know how hard this is because I’ve done it. And I can tell you,
insulting potential allies doesn’t make it any easier. And demonizing Muslims also feeds a
narrative that jihadists use to recruit new followers around the world, that the United States is at
war with Islam. As both the Pentagon and the FBI have said in the past week, we cannot in any
way lend credence to that twisted idea. This is not a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash between
civilization and barbarism and that’s how it must be seen and fought.
Some will tell you that our open society is a vulnerability in the struggle against terrorism. I
disagree. I believe our tolerance and diversity are at the core of our strength. At a Naturalization
ceremony for new citizens today in Washington, President Obama noted the tension throughout
our history between welcoming or rejecting the stranger. It is, he said, about the meaning of
America, what kind of country do we want to be? And it’s about the capacity of each generation
to honor the creed as old as our founding, E Pluribus Unum. Out of many we are one.
President Obama is right, and it matters. It’s no coincidence that American Muslims have long
been better integrated and less susceptible to radicalization than Muslims in less welcoming
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countries. We can’t give in to demagogues who play on our basest instincts. We must instead
rely on the principles written into our American DNA. Freedom. Equality. Opportunity.
America is strongest when all our people believe they have a stake in our country and our future,
no matter where they’re from, what they look like, how they worship, or who they love. Our
country was founded by people fleeing religious persecution. As George Washington put it, the
United States gives “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” So to all our Muslim
American brothers and sisters, this is your country too. And I am proud to be your fellow
American.
And I want to remind us, particularly our Republican friends, that George W. Bush was right. Six
days after 9/11 he went to a Muslim community center and here’s what he said, those who feel
like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take their anger don’t represent the best of America,
they represent the worst of human kind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.
So if you want to see the best of America, you need look no further than Army Captain Humayun
Khan. He was born in the United Arab Emirates. He moved to Maryland as a small child, and
later graduated from the University of Virginia, before enlisting in the U.S. Army.
In June 2004, he was serving in Iraq. One day, while his infantry unit was guarding the gates of
their base, a suspicious vehicle appeared. Captain Khan told his troops to get back, but he went
forward. He took ten steps toward the car before it exploded. Captain Khan was killed, but his
unit was saved by his courageous acts. Captain Khan was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star
and Purple Heart. He was just 27 years old. “We still wonder what made him take those 10 steps,”
Khan’s father said in a recent interview. “Maybe that’s the point,” he went on, “where all the
values, all the service to country, all the things he learned in this country kicked in. It was those
values that made him take those 10 steps. Those 10 steps told us we did not make a mistake in
moving to this country,” his father finished.
As hard as this is, it’s time to move from fear to resolve. It’s time to stand up and say, “We are
Americans.” We are the greatest nation on earth not in spite of the challenges we’ve faced, but
because of them. Americans will not buckle or break. We will not turn on each other or turn on
our principles. We will pursue our enemies with unyielding power and purpose. We will crush
their would-be caliphate and counter radical jihadism wherever it takes root. We’re in it for the
long haul. And we’ll stand taller and stronger than they can possibly imagine. That’s what we do
here. It’s who we are. That’s how we’ll win, by looking at one another with respect, with concern,
with commitment. That’s the America that I know makes us all so proud to be a part of.
Thank you all very much.
Hillary Clinton’s Nevada caucuses victory speech
Date: 20.02.2016
Thank you, Nevada, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. You know. I am so, so
thrilled, and so grateful to all of my supporters out there. Some may have doubted us, but we
never doubted each other. And, this one's for you.
I want to congratulate Senator Sanders on a hard fought race here. I want to thank each and every
one of you. You turned out in every corner of this state with determination and purpose. Hotel
and casino workers who never wavered.
Students with too much debt, and small business owners who never go off the clock.
Tens of thousands of men and women with kids to raise, bills to pay, and dreams that won't die.
This is your campaign, and it is a campaign to break down every barrier that holds you back.
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We're going to build ladders of opportunity in their place so every American can go as far as your
hard work can take you.
And, to the thousands of volunteers and organizers who worked so hard in this state.
To the more than 750,000 people who've gone to Hillaryclinton.com and contributed what you
could, the vast majority giving less than $100 dollars, and to the millions of people across our
country who are supporting our campaign. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
We hear you, we see you, we're incredibly grateful to you because we're in this together. We look
at our country and see so much that isn't working the way it should. We see grandparents forced
to choose between paying rent and buying medicine because a prescription drug company has
increased prices 5,000% overnight. We see African American families denied mortgages are
nearly three times the rate of white families. We see small towns and rural communities hollowed
out by lost jobs, and lost hope. We see a rising generation of young people coming of age in a
world where opportunity seems out of reach.
And, worst of all, we see children growing up in poverty, or pain, or fear. Here in Nevada, a brave
young girl told me how scared she is that her parents could be deported. In South Carolina I met
kids trying to learn in crumbling classrooms and neglected communities.
And, then there's Flint, Michigan where children were poisoned by toxic water just because their
governor wanted to save a little money.
Americans are right to be angry, but we're also hungry for real solutions.
In the campaign, we've heard a lot about Washington and Wall Street. We all want to get secret
unaccountable money out of politics. That starts with appointing a new Justice to the Supreme
Court.
Who will protect the right of every citizen to vote, not every corporation to buy elections.
And, we also agree that Wall Street can never be allow to threaten Main street again. No bank can
be too big to fail, no executive too powerful to jail. But, if we listen to the voices of Flint, and
Ferguson, if we open our hearts to the families of coal country, and Indian country, if we listen to
the hopes and heartaches of hardworking people across America, it's clear there is so much more
to be done. The truth is we aren't a single issue country. We need more than a plan for the big
banks. The middle class needs a raise, and we need more jobs. We need jobs that pay well and
can't be outsourced. Jobs that provide dignity and a future. We can do it by unleashing the
innovation of our entrepreneurs and small businesses. We can do it with new investments in
manufacturing, infrastructure, and clean energy, especially here in Nevada which will be the
center of solar power. Somebody, some country is going to be the clean energy superpower of the
21st century. It's probably going to be wither China, Germany, or us, and I want it to be us, and it
will be when I'm President.
We also have to do more to make it easier for parents to balance work and family, and to break
down barriers that keep so many people on the sidelines of the economy, especially women. Don't
you think we've waited long enough? It's time for equal pay for equal work.
And, don't you think it's time to face head on the reality of systemic racism, and invest in
communities that have been left out and left behind? That means reforming our criminal justice
system, our immigration system, ensuring that people with disabilities have the same
opportunities to work and fully participate in our society.
It means to make sure that nothing holds you back, not debt, not discrimination, not a deck stacked
for those at the top. Now, noone can get this done alone, not even the President of the United
States. It's got to be the mission of our entire nation. I have never believed in dividing America
between us and them. We are all in this together, we all have to do our part. So, let me say this to
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the men and women who run our countries corporations. If you cheat your employees, exploit
consumers, pollute our environment, or rip-off taxpayers, we're going to hold you accountable.
But, if you do the right things, if you invest in your workers, contribute to your communities, help
build a better America, we're going to stand with you. We're going to go into the future together.
We need more jobs. We need more opportunity.
And, I want to say this to all the young people out there. I know what you're up against. If you
left college with a ton of loans, it's not enough just to make college more affordable. You need
help right now with the debt you already have. That's why I have a plan to cut your interest rates,
and cap payments so you never have to pay more than you can afford. But, I want you to think
about this.
It can't be just about what we're going to give to you, it has to be what we're going to build together.
Your generation is the most tolerant, and connected our country has ever seen. In the days ahead
we will propose new ways for more Americans to get involved in national service and give back
to our communities because everyone of us has a role to play in building the future we want.
Washington is never going to have all the answers, but for every problem we face, somewhere
someone in America is solving it, and we need you to be part of that exciting journey we can make
together. We need the community activist who decides to run for school board. The entrepreneur
who stays and builds instead of leaving a hometown that has seen better days. We need the
millions of teachers and nurses, police officers, and firefighters...... Who get up every day and do
quite, heroic work to make our country a safer, fairer, better place.
It's going to take each of us working together, growing together, looking out for one another, and
lifting each other up because there is a basic truth about America. It's something that Bill and I
have been the beneficiaries of, that we have tried to contribute to, and do all that we could to
continue. America can only live up to its potential when each and every American has a chance
to live up to your potential too. So, imagine a tomorrow where no child grows up in the shadow
of discrimination or under the spectre of deportation. And, every child in every zipcode gets the
education he or she needs and deserves.
Imagine a tomorrow where every parent can find a good job, and every grandparent can enjoy a
secure retirement. Where small businesses thrive, and big businesses play by the rules, and give
more back to the country that has given them so much. Where hard work is honored, families are
supported, and communities are strong. With your help, that is the tomorrow we will build for our
country. So, please join us. Go to Hillaryclinton.com, become a part of this campaign, or text,
"JOIN", 47246 right now. Let's do this together. Now, I'm heading on.
I am on my way to Texas, Bill is on his way to Colorado. The fight goes on, the future that we
want is within our grasp. Thank you all. God bless you.
Hillary Clinton's South Carolina speech
Date: 28.02.2016
Thank you so much South Carolina! Thank you so much, from one end of this state to another, I
am so greatly appreciative, because today you sent a message: in America, when we stand
together, there is no barrier too big to break.
We’ve now gone through four early states, and I want to congratulate Senator Sanders on running
a great race. And tomorrow, this campaign goes national.
We are going to compete for every vote in every state. We are not taking anything, and we’re not
taking anyone for granted.
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I want to thank all the local leaders, legislators, mayors, pastors, organizers, volunteers who have
worked their hearts out for this campaign. I thank all of our great South Carolina friends going
back so many years. I especially want to thank two of your former great Democratic governors,
Dick Riley and Jim Hodges. And I especially want to thank your champion—your statesman—in
Congress, Jim Clyburn. I am so looking forward to working with the congressman to make the
changes and continue the progress that we can build on the record and accomplishments of
President Obama.
And to the almost 850,000 people who have contributed what they could, most giving less than
$100, I thank each and every one of you. Now, every day since Iowa, more and more of you have
stepped up. Today, grassroots donors are powering this campaign.
And to the millions of people watching across our country, please join us by making a donation
to hillaryclinton.com. And here’s why: because together, we can break down all the barriers
holding our families and our country back; we can build ladders of opportunity and empowerment
so every single American can have that chance to live up to his or her God-given potential. And
then, and only then, can America live up to its full potential, too.
This campaign, and this victory tonight, is for the parents and teachers in rural South Carolina.
They showed me crumbling classrooms and communities too long neglected. We’re going to work
together to give our children the education they need and deserve here in South Carolina and
across America.
This campaign and our victory is for the entrepreneur who told me more dreams die in the parking
lots of banks than anywhere else. And that’s especially true for women and people of color. So
we’re going to work together to give people—particularly young people—the tools you need to
start that small business you’ve been dreaming of.
And this campaign and our victory is for the reverend—a presiding elder of the AME Church—
who looked at all the violence and division in our country and asked me the other night, ‘How?
How are we ever going to strengthen the bonds of family and community again?’
Well, we’re going to start by working together with more love and kindness in our hearts and
more respect for each other, even when we disagree.
Despite what you hear, we don’t need to make America great again: America has never stopped
being great. But we do need to make America whole again. Instead of building walls, we need to
be tearing down barriers. We need to show by everything we do that we really are in this together.
Today, too many people at the top, too many corporations have forgotten this basic truth about
what makes America great. Prescription drug companies that increase the price of drugs for no
reason [other] than greed and then double and triple bills to folks overnight; corporations that use
shell games to shift their headquarters overseas for no other reason than to avoid paying their fair
share of taxes; companies like Johnson Controls, an auto parts company in Wisconsin, that we
taxpayers helped to save with the auto rescue in 2008.
Now, let there be no doubt in any board room or executive suite across this country: if you cheat
your employees, exploit your customers, pollute our environment, or rip off the taxpayers, we will
hold you accountable. If you turn your back on America, you’ll pay a price. But, if you do the
right thing, if you invest in your workers and in your country’s future, then we will stand with
you.
Now, together, we have to break down all the barriers. Not just some. It’s important that Wall
Street never threaten Main Street again. No bank can be too big to fail and no executive too
powerful to jail.
But, America isn’t a single issue country, my friends. We need more than a plan for the biggest
banks. The middle class needs a raise! And we need more good jobs! Jobs that pay well and can’t
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be outsourced. Jobs that provide dignity and a path to a brighter future. And we can create those
good jobs by building on the progress we’ve made under President Obama. So let’s make new
investments in manufacturing and small business, in scientific research, in clean energy, enough
clean energy to power every home in America. And, don’t let anybody tell you we can’t make
things in America: I know we can, and I know we will.
Let’s break down the barriers that keep people on the sidelines of our economy; especially women.
Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough for quality affordable child care and paid family leave?
Don’t you think it’s time for equal pay for equal work?
And let’s break down the barriers that stop our children from getting the best possible start in life.
We need to support great teachers and great schools in every zip code.
Let’s break down the barriers holding back our young people, especially the student debt that
makes it hard to imagine ever living the life you want.
And we are going to give special support to our historically black colleges and universities, which
play a vital role in this state and across our country.
Now, breaking down all the barriers means we also have to face the reality of systemic racism
that more than a half a century after Rosa Parks sat, and Dr. King marched, and John Lewis bled,
still plays a significant role in determining who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind.
We have to invest in communities of color. Reform our broken criminal justice and immigration
system. We have to guarantee opportunity, dignity, and justice for every American.
And tonight I want to pay tribute to five extraordinary women who criss-crossed this state with
me and for me. Five mothers, brought together by tragedy.
Sabrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, shot and killed in Florida just for walking down the
street.
Lucy Mcbath, mother of Jordan Davis, shot and killed by someone who thought he was playing
his music too loud in his car.
Maria Hamilton, mother of Dontre, shot and killed by police in Milwaukee.
Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, choked to death after being stopped for selling loose cigarettes
on the street.
And Geneva Reed-Veal, mother of Sandra Bland, who died in police custody in Texas.
They all lost children, which is almost unimaginable. Yet they have not been broken or embittered.
Instead, they have channeled their sorrow into a strategy and their mourning into a movement.
And they are reminding us of something deep and powerful in the American spirit.
By now, we all know the story of Flint, Michigan. How a city’s children were poisoned by toxic
water because their governor wanted to save a little money. But there’s another side to the story
in Flint. It’s a story of a community that’s been knocked down but refused to be knocked out. It’s
hundreds of union plumbers coming from across the country to help install new water fixtures.
It’s students raising funds for water deliveries and showing up in Flint to distribute supplies. It’s
the United Auto Workers and General Motors donating millions of dollars.
We know there are many other Flints out there. Communities that have been left out and left
behind. But for every problem we face anywhere in America, someone somewhere is working to
solve it. Our country was built by people who had each other’s backs; who understood we all have
to do our part, and that at our best we all rise together.
Imagine what we can all build together, when each and every American has the chance to live up
to his or her potential.
Imagine a tomorrow where no child grows up in the shadow of discrimination or under the specter
of deportation.
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Imagine a tomorrow where every parent can find a good job, and every grandparent can enjoy a
secure retirement.
Imagine a tomorrow where hard work is honored, where families are supported, and where
communities are strong; when we trust and respect each other despite all that divides us.
So, please. Join us in this campaign for our country’s future. Go to hillaryclinton.com, or text
JOIN to 47246, right now.
You know, on one of my first trips to South Carolina during this campaign, I stopped by a bakery
here in Columbia. I was saying hello everybody; I went over to say hello to a man reading a book
in the corner. Turned out he was a minister. And the book was a Bible. He was studying I
Corinthians 13, which happens to be one of my favorite passages. “Love never fails,” it tells us.
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
These are words to live by not only for ourselves but also for our country. I know it sometimes
seems a little odd for someone running for president, these days, in this time, to say we need more
loving kindness in America. But I’m telling you, from the bottom up my heart, we do. We do.
We have so much to look forward to. There is no doubt in my mind that America’s best years can
be ahead of us. We have got to believe that! We’ve got to work for that! We have to stand with
each other, we have to hold each other up, lift each other up! Move together into the future that
we will make! Thank you!
Hillary Clinton’s Super Tuesday Victory Speech
Date: 01.03.2016
Thank you all so much. What a Super Tuesday.
You know all across our country today they, Democrats, voted to break down barriers so we can
all rise together.
I am so delighted to be here with you in Florida. I congratulate Senator Sanders on his strong
showing and campaigning and I’m grateful to all of you who voted for me, to the volunteers and
organizers. I know you’ve worked your hearts out. And to all my friends, many of a lifetime who
traveled to all the states to tell people about the candidate they knew. And to the hundreds of
thousands of people who went to Hillary Clinton dot com to give what they could, most less than
$100.
Now this campaign moves forward to the Crescent City, the Motor City and beyond. We’re going
to work for every vote and we will need all of you to keep volunteering, contributing, doing
everything you can – talking to your friends and neighbors. Because this country belongs to all of
us, not just those at the top. Not just the people who look one way, worship one way, or even think
one way. America prospers when we all prosper. America is strong when we’re all strong. And
we know we’ve got work to do. But, that work, that work is not to make America great again.
America never stopped being great. We need …We have to make America whole. We have to fill
in what’s been hollowed out.
We have to make strong the broken places, re-stitch the bonds of trust and respect across our
country.
Now it might be unusual, as I’ve said before, for a presidential candidate to say this, but I’m going
to keep saying it, “I believe what we need in America today is more love and kindness.”Because
you know what? It works. Instead of building walls we’re going to break down barriers and build
… build ladders of opportunity and empowerment so every American can live up to his or her
potential, because then and only then can America live up to its full potential too.
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Now it’s clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher. And the rhetoric
we’re hearing on the other side has never been lower. Trying to divide America between us and
them is wrong, and we’re not going to let it work.
You know whether we like it or not, we’re all in this together, my friends, and we all have to do
our part. But unfortunately, too many of those with the most wealth and the most power in this
country today seem to have forgotten that basic truth about America. You know yesterday I was
at the Old South Meeting House in Boston where nearly two and a half centuries ago American
patriots organized the original Tea Party.
And I had to wonder what they would make of corporations that seem to have absolutely no
loyalty to the country that they love so much. What would they say about student loan companies
that overcharge young people struggling to get out of debt. Even young men and women serving
our country in the military, or corporations that shift their headquarters overseas to avoid paying
their fair share of taxes like Johnson Controls, an auto parts company from Wisconsin that all of
us, we taxpayers, helped to bail out with the auto rescue back in 2008. Now they’re turning their
back on America. Now I’m not interested in condemning whole categories of people or
businesses. I’m just interested in making things right. So let there be no doubt, if you cheat your
employees, exploit consumers, pollute our environment or rip off the taxpayers, we’re going to
hold you accountable. But, if you do the right thing, if you invest in your workers, and in
America’s future then we’ll stand with you. We all need to work together to break down the
barriers holding back our families and our country. Because the middle class needs a raise. And
more good jobs. Jobs that pay enough for a family to live on. Even put a little away for retirement.
Jobs that provide dignity and a bright future. That’s why we have to invest in manufacturing and
infrastructure and small business and clean energy – enough clean energy to power every home
in America. Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t make things in America anymore, because we
can, we are, and we will. And together we can break down the barriers that face working class
families across America, especially in struggling rust belt communities and small, Appalachian
town that have been hollowed out by lost jobs and lost hope. Families who for generations kept
our lights on and our factories running. Together we can break down barriers for our kids so they
get the education they need and deserve.
Every child in America should have a great school and a great teacher no matter what zip code
they live in. Together we can break down barriers for women and finally guarantee equal pay for
equal work.
And we can break down barriers for families who’ve seen too many black children harassed,
humiliated, and even killed. WE can break down barriers for voters in North Carolina who’ve
been systematically disenfranchised and dis(inaudible).
We can break down barriers for hard-working immigrants everywhere who are too often exploited
and intimidated. We have to defend all our rights – workers’ rights, and women’s rights, civil
rights and voting rights, LGBT rights and rights for people with disabilities. And that starts by
standing with President Obama when he nominates a strong, progressive justice.
I know too many Americans have lost faith in our future. We hear it in the voices of parents who
don’t know how they’re going to give their kids the opportunities they deserve. We see it in the
eyes of working men and women who don’t expect to come easy but wonder why it has to be
quite so hard.
Like many of you I find strength and purpose in the values I learned from my family and my faith.
They gave me simple words to live by, an old Methodist saying. Do all the good you can, for all
the people you can, for as long as you can, and that is why… that is why I believe deeply that if
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we resist the forces trying to drive us apart we can come together to make this country work for
everyone. The struggling, the striving, and the successful, if we all do our part we can restore our
common faith in our common future. That’s the spirit powering this campaign. It comes from a
young janitor in Arkansas who stopped buying junk food and putting off getting a haircut so he
could contribute to it. It comes from the disabled combat veteran from Nebraska who sent in $10.
In 70 years of his life he had never donated to a political campaign until now.
You can join us too. Please go to Hillary Clinton dot com, make a donation, text “join” to 47246,
and let me leave you with a story that has inspired so many of us. By now we all know what
happened in Flint, Michigan, don’t we. Our city’s children were poisoned by toxic water because
their governor wanted to save a little money. But there’s another story in Flint.
It’s the story of a community that’s been knocked down but refused to be knocked out. It is
hundreds of union plumbers coming from across the country to install new water fixtures. It’s
students raising funds for water deliveries and showing up to distribute supplies. It’s the United
Auto Workers and General Motors donating millions of dollars to help.
And when I visited Flint a few weeks ago I went to the House of Prayer Missionary Baptist
Church. The congregation locked arms and sang, “We’ve come too far from we started from.”
They’re not about to quit now. We know there are many other Flints out there. Communities that
are hurting and need help. But we’ve come too far in this country to let us turn back.
We’re gonna build on the progress that we’ve made. We saved the auto industry thanks to
President Obama, now we gotta create new jobs and industries of the future.
We now have insured 90 percent of Americans thanks to President Obama and now we’ve got to
finish the job and get to 100 percent. We have come too far to stop now. We’ve got to keep going.
Keep working. Keep breaking down those barriers and imagine what we can build together when
each and every American has a chance to live up to his or her own God-given potential.
Thank you all so very much. Thank you.
Hillary Clinton’s Pennsylvania Primary Speech
Date: 15.03.2016
It's a long road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and it runs right through the heart of Pennsylvania.
You know, for six weeks, Senator Obama and I have crisscrossed this state, meeting people up
close, being judged side-by-side, making our best case. You listened, and today you chose.
With two wars abroad and an economic crisis here at home, you know the stakes are high and the
challenges are great, but you also know the possibilities. Those possibilities are endless, if we roll
up our sleeves and get to work with a president who's ready to lead on day one.
You know, that means ready to take charge as commander-in-chief and make this economy work
for middle-class families.
And I thank you. I thank you, Pennsylvania, for deciding I can be that president.
You know, for me, the victory we share tonight is deeply personal. It was here in Pennsylvania
where my grandfather started work as a boy in the lace mills and ended up as a supervisor five
decades later. It was here where my father attended college and played football for Penn State.
And I am back here tonight because of their hard work and sacrifice. And I only wish they could
have lived to see this moment, because in this election I carry with me not just their dreams, but
the dreams of people like them and like you all across our country, people... people who
embrace hard work and opportunity, who never waiver in the face of adversity, who stand for
what you believe and never stop believing in the promise of America.
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I'm in this race to fight for you, to fight... to fight for everyone who's ever been counted out, for
everyone fighting to pay the grocery bills or the medical bills, the credit card and mortgage
payments, and the outrageous price of gas at the pump today.
You know, the pundits questioned whether Pennsylvanians would trust me with this charge. And
tonight you showed you do.
You know you can count on me to stand up strong for you every single day in the White House.
This is a historic race. And I commend Senator Obama and his supporters tonight. We are, in
many ways, all on this journey together to create an America that embraces every last one of us,
the women in their 90s who tell me they were born before women could vote. And they're hopeful
of seeing a woman in the White House.
The mothers and fathers at my events who lift their little girls on their shoulders and whisper in
their ears, "See, you can be anything you want."
Tonight, more than ever, I need your help to continue this journey. This is your campaign, and
this is your victory tonight.
Your support has meant the difference between winning and losing. Now, we can only keep
winning if we can keep competing with an opponent who outspends us so massively, so I hope
you'll go to HillaryClinton.com... and show your support tonight, because the future of this
campaign is in your hands.
You know, some people counted me out and said to drop out. But the American people...
Well, the American people don't quit, and they deserve a president who doesn't quit, either.
You know, tonight, all across Pennsylvania and America, teachers are grading papers and doctors
and nurses are caring for the sick, and you deserve a leader who listens to you. Waitresses are
pouring coffee, and police officers are standing guard, and small businesses are working to meet
that payroll. And you deserve a champion who stands with you.
And, of course, all across the world, our men and women in uniform, some on your second, third,
or fourth tour of duty, you deserve a commander-in-chief who will finally bring you home... and
who will rebuild our strained military, do whatever it takes to care for our veterans, wounded in
both body and spirit. Today, here in Pennsylvania, you made your voices heard. And, because of
you, the tide is turning. We were up against a formidable opponent who outspent us 3-to-1. He
broke every spending record in this state trying to knock us out of the race. Well, the people of
Pennsylvania had other ideas today. You know, the presidency is the toughest job in the world,
but the pressures of a campaign are nothing compared to the pressures of the White House. And
today, Pennsylvanians looked through all the heat and saw the light of a brighter tomorrow, a
tomorrow of shared prosperity and restored world leadership for peace, security and cooperation.
After seven long years of President Bush, we've got our work cut out for us, and we don't have a
minute to waste. So it's high time we stop talking about our problems and start solving them, and
that is what my campaign is all about.
You know, all through this campaign, I have offered solutions, solutions for good jobs you can
raise a family on, jobs that can't be shipped overseas, and, on Earth Day, clean, renewable green
jobs that can put us on the right track to the future... solutions for independence from foreign oil
and exploding gas prices, quality, affordable health care, not just for many Americans or most
Americans, but for every single American, no exceptions and no excuses...
... affordable college, and real improvements in public schools, not the failure that is No Child
Left Behind.
We're going to end the war on science and have a renewed commitment to science and research.
We will tackle everything from autism to Alzheimer's, cancer to diabetes, and make a real
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difference. I look forward to discussing all of these issues with the people of Indiana and North
Carolina and the states that I'll be visiting in the coming weeks.
Not long ago -- not long ago, a woman handed me a photograph of her father as a young soldier.
He was receiving the Medal of Honor from President Truman at the White House. During
World War II, he had risked his life on a daring mission to drive back the enemy and protect his
fellow soldiers.
In the corner of that photo, in shaking handwriting, this American hero had simply written, "To
Hillary Clinton, keep fighting for us." And that is what...That is what I'm going to do, because
America is worth fighting for. You are worth fighting for.
It was in this city that our founders declared America's independence and are permanent mission
to form a more perfect union. Now, neither Senator Obama nor I, nor many of you, were fully
included in that vision, but we've been blessed by men and women in each generation who saw
America not as it is, but as it could and should be, the abolitionists and the suffragists, the
progressives and the union members, the civil rights leaders...
... all those who marched, protested, and risked their lives, because they looked into their children's
eyes and saw the promise of a better future.
Because of them, I grew up taking for granted that women could vote. Because of them, my
daughter grew up taking for granted that children of all colors could attend school together. And
because of them, and because of you, this next generation will grow up taking for granted that a
woman or an African-American can be the president of the United States of America. I am so
honored by the support and the hospitality of all of the people of Pennsylvania. And I want to
especially thank Governor Rendell and Mayor Nutter...
... Lieutenant Governor Catherine Baker Knoll, and State Treasurer Robin Wiessmann, and State
Party Chair T.J. Rooney. These are great leaders and dear friends, as are my friends from the
Congress, Representatives Murtha, Sestak, Schwartz, and Kanjorski. Their support means the
world to me, and the support of 100 mayors across this commonwealth and so many other state
and local leaders who worked hard for this victory tonight.
I want to thank my friends in our labor unions for standing with us every step of the way. And my
outstanding staff, volunteers and supporters here in Pennsylvania and across America. And I
especially want to thank my family for their incredible love and support. Bill and Chelsea have
crisscrossed Pennsylvania from one end to the other. My brothers, Hugh and Tony, who love
Pennsylvania with all their hearts, from our childhood summers in Lake Winola, and my mother,
who is with us tonight. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but if you're ready, I'm ready.
Now, I might stumble and I might get knocked down, but as long as you'll stand with me, I will
always get right back up.
Because, for me, in the end, the question isn't whether we can keep America's promise; it's whether
we will keep America's promise.
So let me ask you -- so let me ask you, will we, will we once again be the can-do nation, the nation
that defies the odds and does the impossible?
Will we break the barriers and open the doors and lift up all of our people?
Will we reach out to the world and lead by our power of our ideals again?
Will we take back the White House and take back our country?
I believe with all of my heart that, together, we will turn promises into action, words will become
solutions, hope will become reality. So my answer to any who doubt is: Yes, we will.
Thank you, and God bless you.
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Hillary Clinton’s Speech to AIPAC
Date: 21.03.2016
Thank you so much.
It is wonderful to be here and see so many friends. I’ve spoken at a lot of AIPAC conferences in
the past, but this has to be one of the biggest yet, and there are so many young people here,
thousands of college students…
from hundreds of campuses around the country. I think we should all give them a hand for being
here and beginning their commitment to this important cause.
You will keep the U.S.-Israel relationship going strong. You know, as a senator from New York
and secretary of State…
I’ve had the privilege of working closely with AIPAC members to strengthen and deepen
America’s ties with Israel. Now, we may not have always agreed on every detail, but we’ve always
shared an unwavering, unshakable commitment to our alliance and to Israel’s future as a secure
and democratic homeland for the Jewish people. And your support helped us expand security and
intelligence cooperation, developed the Iron Dome missile defense system, build a global
coalition to impose the toughest sanctions in history on Iran and so much more.
Since my first visit to Israel 35 years ago, I have returned many times and made many friends. I
have worked with and learned from some of Israel’s great leaders — although I don’t think
Yitzhak Rabin ever forgave me for banishing him to the White House balcony when he wanted
to smoke. Now I am here as a candidate for president, and… I know that all of you understand
what’s at stake in this election. Our next president will walk into the Oval Office next January
and immediately face a world of both perils we must meet with strength and skill, and
opportunities we must seize and build on.
The next president will sit down at that desk and start making decisions that will affect both the
lives and livelihoods of every American, and the security of our friends around the world. So we
have to get this right.
As AIPAC members, you understand that while the turmoil of the Middle East presents enormous
challenge and complexity, walking away is not an option. Candidates for president who think the
United States can outsource Middle East security to dictators, or that America no longer has vital
national interests at stake in this region are dangerously wrong. It would be a serious mistake for
the United States to abandon our responsibilities, or cede the mantle of leadership for global peace
and security to anyone else. As we gather here, three evolving threats — Iran’s continued
aggression, a rising tide of extremism across a wide arc of instability, and the growing effort to
de-legitimize Israel on the world stage — are converging to make the U.S.-Israel alliance more
indispensable than ever. We have to combat all these trends with even more intense security and
diplomatic cooperation. The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever
and more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries and to advance our
shared values. This is especially true at a time when Israel faces brutal terrorist stabbings,
shootings and vehicle attacks at home. Parents worry about letting their children walk down the
street. Families live in fear. Just a few weeks ago, a young American veteran and West Point
graduate named Taylor Force was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist near the Jaffa Port. These
attacks must end immediately…And Palestinian leaders need to stop inciting violence, stop
celebrating terrorists as martyrs and stop paying rewards to their families.
Because we understand the threat Israel faces we know we can never take for granted the strength
of our alliance or the success of our efforts. Today, Americans and Israelis face momentous
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choices that will shape the future of our relationship and of both our nations. The first choice is
this: are we prepared to take the U.S./Israel alliance to the next level?
This relationship has always been stronger and deeper than the headlines might lead you to
believe. Our work together to develop the Iron Dome saved many Israeli lives when Hamas
rockets began to fly.
I saw its effectiveness firsthand in 2012 when I worked with Prime Minister Netanyahu to
negotiate a cease fire in Gaza. And if I’m fortunate enough to be elected president, the United
States will reaffirm we have a strong and enduring national interest in Israel’s security.
And we will never allow Israel’s adversaries to think a wedge can be driven between us. As we
have differences, as any friends do, we will work to resolve them quickly and respectfully. We
will also be clear that the United States has an enduring interest in and commitment to a more
peaceful, more stable, more secure Middle East. And we will step up our efforts to achieve that
outcome. Indeed, at a time of unprecedented chaos and conflict in the region, America needs an
Israel strong enough to deter and defend against its enemies, strong enough to work with us to
tackle shared challenges and strong enough to take bold steps in the pursuit of peace.
That’s why I believe we must take our alliance to the next level. I hope a new 10-year defense
memorandum of understanding is concluded as soon as possible to meet Israel’s security needs
far into the future.
That will also send a clear message to Israel’s enemies that the United States and Israel stand
together united.
It’s also why, as president, I will make a firm commitment to ensure Israel maintains its qualitative
military edge.
The United States should provide Israel with the most sophisticated defense technology so it can
deter and stop any threats. That includes bolstering Israeli missile defenses with new systems like
the Arrow Three and David’s Sling. And we should work together to develop better tunnel
detection, technology to prevent armed smuggling, kidnapping and terrorist attacks.
One of the first things I’ll do in office is invite the Israeli prime minister to visit the White House.
And I will send a delegation from the Pentagon and the joint chiefs to Israel for early consultations.
Let’s also expand our collaboration beyond security. Together, we can build an even more vibrant
culture of innovation that tightens the links between Silicon Valley and Israeli tech companies
and entrepreneurs.
There is much Americans can learn from Israel, from cybersecurity to energy security to water
security and just on an everyday people- to-people level. And it’s especially important to continue
fostering relationships between American and Israeli young people who may not always
remember our shared past. They are the future of our relationship and we have to do more to
promote that.
Many of the young people here today are on the front lines of the battle to oppose the alarming
boycott, divestment and sanctions movement known as BDS.
Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, especially in Europe, we
must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people.
I’ve been sounding the alarm for a while now. As I wrote last year in a letter to the heads of major
American Jewish organizations, we have to be united in fighting back against BDS. Many of its
proponents have demonized Israeli scientists and intellectuals, even students.
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To all the college students who may have encountered this on campus, I hope you stay strong.
Keep speaking out. Don’t let anyone silence you, bully you or try to shut down debate, especially
in places of learning like colleges and universities.
Anti-Semitism has no place in any civilized society, not in America, not in Europe, not anywhere.
Now, all of this work defending Israel’s legitimacy, expanding security and economic ties, taking
our alliance to the next level depends on electing a president with a deep, personal commitment
to Israel’s future as a secure, Democratic Jewish state, and to America’s responsibilities as a global
leader.
Tonight, you’ll hear from candidates with very different visions of American leadership in the
region and around the world. You’ll get a glimpse of a potential U.S. foreign policy that would
insult our allies, not engage them, and embolden our adversaries, not defeat them.
For the security of Israel and the world, we need America to remain a respected global leader,
committed to defending and advancing the international order. An America able to block efforts
to isolate or attack Israel. The alternative is unthinkable. Yes, we need steady hands, not a
president who says he’s neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who knows what on
Wednesday, because everything’s negotiable. Well, my friends, Israel’s security is nonnegotiable.
I have sat in Israeli hospital rooms holding the hands of men and women whose bodies and lives
were torn apart by terrorist bombs. I’ve listened to doctors describe the shrapnel left in a leg, an
arm or even a head.
That’s why I feel so strongly that America can’t ever be neutral when it comes to Israel’s security
or survival. We can’t be neutral when rockets rain down on residential neighborhoods, when
civilians are stabbed in the street, when suicide bombers target the innocent. Some things aren’t
negotiable.
And anyone who doesn’t understand that has no business being our president. The second choice
we face is whether we will have the strength and commitment to confront the adversaries that
threaten us, especially Iran. For many years, we’ve all been rightly focused on the existential
danger of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. After all, this remains an extremist regime that
threatens to annihilate Israel. That’s why I led the diplomacy to impose crippling sanctions and
force Iran to the negotiating table, and why I ultimately supported the agreement that has put a lid
on its nuclear program. Today Iran’s enriched uranium is all but gone, thousands of centrifuges
have stopped spinning, Iran’s potential breakout time has increased and new verification measures
are in place to help us deter and detect any cheating. I really believe the United States, Israel and
the world are safer as a result.
But still, as I laid out at a speech at the Brookings Institution last year, it’s not good enough to
trust and verify. Our approach must be distrust and verify. This deal must come with vigorous
enforcement, strong monitoring, clear consequences for any violations and a broader strategy to
confront Iran’s aggression across the region. We cannot forget that Tehran’s fingerprints are on
nearly every conflict across the Middle East, from Syria to Lebanon to Yemen.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies are attempting to establish a position on
the Golan from which to threaten Israel, and they continue to fund Palestinian terrorists. In
Lebanon, Hezbollah is amassing an arsenal of increasingly sophisticated rockets and artillery that
well may be able to hit every city in Israel.
Tonight, you will hear a lot of rhetoric from the other candidates about Iran, but there’s a big
difference between talking about holding Tehran accountable and actually doing it. Our next
president has to be able to hold together our global coalition and impose real consequences for
even the smallest violations of this agreement. We must maintain the legal and diplomatic
architecture to turn all the sanctions back on if need. If I’m elected the leaders of Iran will have
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no doubt that if we see any indication that they are violating their commitment not to seek, develop
or acquire nuclear weapons, the United States will act to stop it, and that we will do so with force
if necessary. Iranian provocations, like the recent ballistic missile tests, are also unacceptable and
should be answered firmly and quickly including with more sanctions. Those missiles were
stamped with words declaring, and I quote, “Israel should be wiped from the pages of history.”
We know they could reach Israel or hit the tens of thousands of American troops stationed in the
Middle East. This is a serious danger and it demands a serious response. The United States must
also continue to enforce existing sanctions and impose additional sanctions as needed on Iran and
the Revolutionary Guard for their sponsorship of terrorism, illegal arms transfers, human rights
violations and other illicit behaviors like cyber attacks. We should continue to demand the safe
return of Robert Levinson and all American citizens unjustly held in Iranian prisons. And we must
work closely with Israel and other partners to cut off the flow of money and arms from Iran to
Hezbollah. If the Arab League can designate all of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, surely it
is time for our friends in Europe and the rest of the international community to do so as well and
to do that now. At the same time, America should always stand with those voices inside Iran
calling for more openness. Now look, we know the supreme leader still calls the shots and that
the hard-liners are intent on keeping their grip on power. But the Iranian people themselves
deserve a better future, and they are trying to make their voices heard. They should know that
America is not their enemy, they should know we will support their efforts to bring positive
change to Iran. Now, of course, Iran is not the only threat we and Israel face. The United States
and Israel also have to stand together against the threat from ISIS and other radical jihadists. An
ISIS affiliate in the Sinai is reportedly stepping up attempts to make inroads in Gaza and partner
with Hamas. On Saturday, a number of Israelis and other foreigners were injured or killed in a
bombing in Istanbul that may well be linked to ISIS. Two of the dead are U.S.-Israeli dual
nationals.
This is a threat that knows no borders. That’s why I’ve laid out a plan to take the fight to ISIS
from the air, on the ground with local forces and online where they recruit and inspire. Our goal
cannot be to contain ISIS, we must defeat ISIS.
And here is a third choice. Will we keep working toward a negotiated peace or lose forever the
goal of two states for two peoples? Despite many setbacks, I remain convinced that peace with
security is possible and that it is the only way to guarantee Israel’s long-term survival as a strong
Jewish and democratic state.
It may be difficult to imagine progress in this current climate when many Israelis doubt that a
willing and capable partner for peace even exists. But inaction cannot be an option. Israelis
deserve a secure homeland for the Jewish people. Palestinians should be able to govern themselves
in their own state, in peace and dignity. And only a negotiated two-state agreement can survive
those outcomes.
If we look at the broader regional context, converging interests between Israel and key Arab states
could make it possible to promote progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Israelis and
Palestinians could contribute toward greater cooperation between Israel and Arabs.
I know how hard all of this is. I remember what it took just to convene Prime Minister Netanyahu
and President Abbas for the three sessions of direct face-to-face talks in 2010 that I presided over.
But Israelis and Palestinians cannot give up on the hope of peace. That will only make it harder
later.
All of us need to look for opportunities to create the conditions for progress, including by taking
positive actions that can rebuild trust — like the recent constructive meetings between the Israeli
and Palestinian finance ministers aiming to help bolster the Palestinian economy, or the daily on
the-ground security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
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But at the same time, all of us must condemn actions that set back the cause of peace. Terrorism
should never be encouraged or celebrated, and children should not be taught to hate in schools.
That poisons the future.
Everyone has to do their part by avoiding damaging actions, including with respect to settlements.
Now, America has an important role to play in supporting peace efforts. And as president, I would
continue the pursuit of direct negotiations. And let me be clear — I would vigorously oppose any
attempt by outside parties to impose a solution, including by the U.N. Security Council.
There is one more choice that we face together, and in some ways, it may be the most important
of all. Will we, as Americans and as Israelis, stay true to the shared democratic values that have
always been at the heart of our relationship? We are both nations built by immigrants and exiles
seeking to live and worship in freedom, nations built on principles of equality, tolerance and
pluralism.
At our best, both Israel and America are seen as a light unto the nations because of those values.
This is the real foundation of our alliance, and I think it’s why so many Americans feel such a
deep emotional connection with Israel. I know that I do. And it’s why we cannot be neutral about
Israel and Israel’s future, because in Israel’s story, we see our own, and the story of all people
who struggle for freedom and self-determination. There’s so many examples. You know, we look
at the pride parade in Tel Aviv, one of the biggest and most prominent in the world.
And we marvel that such a bastion of liberty exists in a region so plagued by intolerance. We see
the vigorous, even raucous debate in Israeli politics and feel right at home.
And, of course, some of us remember a woman, Golda Meir, leading Israel’s government decades
ago and wonder what’s taking us so long here in America?
But we cannot rest on what previous generations have accomplished. Every generation has to
renew our values. And, yes, even fight for them. Today, Americans and Israelis face currents of
intolerance and extremism that threaten the moral foundations of our societies.
Now in a democracy, we’re going to have differences. But what Americans are hearing on the
campaign trail this year is something else entirely: encouraging violence, playing coy with white
supremacists, calling for 12 million immigrants to be rounded up and deported, demanding we
turn away refugees because of their religion, and proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the
United States.
Now, we’ve had dark chapters in our history before. We remember the nearly 1,000 Jews aboard
the St. Louis who were refused entry in 1939 and sent back to Europe. But America should be
better than this. And I believe it’s our responsibility as citizens to say so.
If you see bigotry, oppose it. If you see violence, condemn it. If you see a bully, stand up to him.
On Wednesday evening, Jews around the world will celebrate the Festival of Purim, and children
will learn the story of Esther, who refused to stay silent in the face of evil. It wasn’t easy. She had
a good life. And by speaking out, she risked everything.
But as Mordecai reminded her, we all have an obligation to do our part when danger gathers. And
those of us with power or influence have a special responsibility to do what’s right. As Elie Wiesel
said when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
So, my friends, let us never be neutral or silent in the face of bigotry. Together let’s defend the
shared values that already make America and Israel great.
Let us do the hard work necessary to keep building our friendship and reach out to the next
generation of Americans and Israelis so the bonds between our nations grow even deeper and
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stronger. We are stronger together, and if we face the future side by side, I know for both Israel
and America, our best days are still ahead.
Thank you so much.
Hillary Clinton Delivers Remarks at National Action Network
Date: 13.04.2016
“Good afternoon everyone! I am delighted to be back here and I want to send greetings to
everyone, particularly to Reverend Sharpton and to the board, to Reverend Richardson and all of
those who work with him, to Melanie Campbell, to my long time friend Hazel Dukes, and to all
who are gathered here today. It is wonderful to be back at the National Action Network for the
25th anniversary of your work on the frontlines of our nation’s continuing struggle for civil rights.
You stand up and always have against gun violence, advocate for criminal justice reform, help
young people find jobs, hold corporations accountable, and in a million ways, lift up voices that
too often go unheard.
So for me, it’s great being back in New York and wonderful being here. And I appreciate
Reverend Sharpton introducing the mothers and other loved ones of those whom we we have lost,
people who are joined in a “Club of Grief” that none of us ever want to be members of. And I am
grateful for their witness and their extraordinary commitment to criminal justice reform, to
common sense gun reforms, and so much else.
You know, on Monday, at a celebration of Jackie Robinson, who played his first game for the
Brooklyn Dodgers 69 years ago this week, Reverend Sharpton said, “America was never the
same.” Well, I think it’s fair to say that holds true for the National Action Network as well.
And I want you to imagine what Jackie Robinson would say if he could see us now. The decades
since he put down his glove have brought remarkable progress: the rise of the black middle class,
the tremendous leadership of African Americans in all walks of life – in business, in law, to
government, science, the arts, all the professions, and, of course, Barack and Michelle Obama in
the White House.
But, as you know so well, the last few years also have laid bare deep fault lines in America.
They’ve revealed how frayed our bonds of trust and respect have become.
Despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with racism is far from
finished.
And we are seeing that in this election.
When the front-runner for the Republican nomination was asked in a national television interview
to disavow David Duke and other white supremacists supporting his campaign – he played coy.
This is the same Donald Trump who led the insidious “birther” movement to delegitimize
President Obama. He has called Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers. He wants to ban all
Muslims from entering the United States. And the list goes on.
And not to be outdone by his primary rival, Ted Cruz would treat Muslim Americans like
criminals and religiously profile their neighborhoods.
So, ugly currents that lurked just below the surface of our politics have burst into the open. And
everyone sees this bigotry for what it is. Therefore, it is up to all of us to repudiate it.
Here in New York, we don’t all look the same, sound the same or worship the same. But we have
learned over the years that America’s problems won’t be solved by building walls and dividing
our country between “us” and “them.” We know our diversity is a strength, not a weakness. And
New York represents the best of American values, despite what some on the other side have said
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and that we have to constantly challenge ourselves to stand up and face all that we still have to
overcome.
Now of course, the problem goes far deeper than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.
More than half a century after Rosa Parks sat, and Dr. King marched, and John Lewis bled, race
still plays a significant role in determining who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind.
There’s something wrong, my friends, when the median wealth for black families is a tiny fraction
of the median wealth for white families, when African Americans are still more likely to be denied
a mortgage.
Something’s wrong when black kids get arrested for petty crimes but white kids who do the same
things don’t.
Something’s wrong when gun violence is by far the leading cause of death for young black men,
outstripping the next nine causes of death combined.
Something’s wrong when so many black parents are burying their children.
Imagine if a white baby in parts of our country was twice as likely to die before her first birthday
than a black baby. Imagine the outcry and the resources that would flood in to save those babies.
These are not only problems of economic inequality. They are also problems of racial inequality.
And it is time we face up to the reality of systemic racism in all of its forms.
And once we do, we are called to come together to break down all the barriers that still hold
African-Americans back from fully participating in our economy and our society – and together,
to build ladders of opportunity and empowerment in their place.
As I have said many times, white Americans need to do a much better job of listening when
African-Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers you face every day.
We need to recognize our privilege and practice humility, rather than assume our experiences are
everyone else’s experiences.
We need to try, as best we can, to walk in your shoes, to imagine what it would be like to sit down
our son or daughter down and have “the talk,” or if people followed us around stores, or locked
their car doors when we walked past.
This is a discipline that I have recognized and tried to practice in my own life ever since my
Methodist youth minister took our Methodist youth fellowship group from our nearly-all white
suburb to worship with black and Latino children in Chicago, and to hear Dr. King speak.
And then, in my first semester at law school, I met a woman named Marian Wright Edelman.
Marian was actually here with me the last time I spoke at the National Action Network in 2007.
Many of you know her story.
She was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, a lawyer for the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund in Jackson, a friend of Dr. King’s and Robert Kennedy’s before they were
assassinated, altogether a remarkable leader. Until I met Marian, I wasn’t clear how to channel
my faith and commitment to social justice to make both a living and a difference in the world. I
went to work for her at the Children’s Defense Fund. She sent me to her home state of South
Carolina to investigate the problem of black teenagers being incarcerated in adult jails.
And when I look back at everything else I’ve done, whether it was going undercover in Alabama
as a young woman to help expose segregated academies and strip them of their tax exemptions,
or running a legal clinic at the University of Arkansas to represent prison inmates and poor
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families, it was all part of the same mission: to fight injustice and even the odds for those who
have the odds stacked against them in life and in our society.
That was true when, as First Lady, I worked with both Republicans and Democrats in Congress
to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program that covers eight million children.
It was true when, as the Senator from New York, I worked with parents and doctors and
community leaders to take on the epidemic of children’s asthma in Harlem and the Bronx.
It was true when I worked with the organization 100 Black Men to create the Eagle Academy, a
public school here in New York City whose mission is serving young black and Latino men.
Or when I joined partners in New York, the Congressional delegation, like Charlie Rangel and
Greg Meeks to bring jobs and investment to underserved neighborhoods, and worked with leaders
including my great friend, the late Stephanie Tubbs Jones, to protect voting rights.
It was true when I went to David Dinkins’ annual conference at Columbia University last year
and gave the first policy speech of my Presidential campaign about reforming our criminal justice
system and ending the era of mass incarceration.
So what I have tried to do, what I intend to keep doing with your help, is to refuse to accept as
normal the fact that black men today are far more likely to be stopped and searched by police,
charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than white men convicted of the same
offenses.
And we have seen the toll that takes on families torn apart by excessive incarceration, and children
growing up in homes shattered by prison and poverty. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I
do know how important it is that we address these issues.
And I applaud the National Action Network for being the champion of this cause and helping to
build momentum for reform.
As your Senator, I fought against racial profiling and the disparity in sentencing between crack
and powder cocaine.
As your President, I’ll work with you to lead a national effort for end-to-end reform in our criminal
justice system and I will appoint an Attorney General who will continue the courageous work of
Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, two New Yorkers!
Now everyone, everyone in every community benefits when there is respect for the law and when
everyone is respected by the law.
So we have to rebuild the bonds of trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve
– and stop the tragedy of black men and women being killed by police or dying in custody.
Everyday, here in New York and all over America, there are many police officers inspiring trust
and confidence, putting themselves on the line to save lives.
So let’s learn from those police and departments that are doing it right and apply those lessons
across the country, and make sure the Justice Department has the resources to hold them
accountable when they do it wrong.
Reforming our criminal justice system, though, is just the beginning of our work. Over the course
of my campaign, including in February at the Schomburg Center in Harlem, I have been laying
out a comprehensive agenda for equity and opportunity for black communities.
Mass incarceration is just one part of a broader set of interlocking challenges, because years of
underinvestment and neglect have hollowed out many predominantly African-American
communities. There aren’t enough jobs, and poverty persists from generation to generation. Not
enough families, still today, have access to the education their children they deserve, the
affordable housing they need to live in. Infrastructure has been allowed to crumble, even if it was
ever built before.
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A recent report found the economic impact of widespread inequality in education to be the
equivalent of a “permanent national recession.” That’s a pretty good description of what it’s like
to live in a community that’s been repeatedly left out and left behind. And reports of economic
recovery, which are real, because I don’t think President Obama gets the credit he deserves for
digging us out of the ditch the Republicans put us in in the first place, has given us a strong
foundation to go further.
So, now we need a truly comprehensive approach to how we lift everybody up. That’s why I am
proposing a major, $125 billion “Breaking Every Barrier Agenda” to revitalize and empower
communities of color and places where unemployment and poverty remain stubbornly high – from
inner cities to poor rural areas, from Appalachia to Indian Country.
The pillars of this agenda match many of the challenges that the National Action Network has
also taken on.
It has to start with a strategy to create more good jobs. So my plan devotes $20 billion specifically
to help young people find work and $5 billion to help people who have paid their debt to society
find jobs and support when they get out of prison
We’re going to make more strategic investments in transit and infrastructure to connect black
communities to areas where good-paying jobs actually are.
On Sunday, I was in Baltimore, where the NAACP is fighting the cancellation of a much-needed
rail line that would have made it easier for African Americans in low-income neighborhoods to
access economic opportunities in other parts of the city.
They say transportation is a civil rights issue – and I agree.
And we’re going to support black entrepreneurs, especially black women, who are a powerful
entrepreneurial force to get the capital they need to start and grow small businesses, because that’s
where a majority of the jobs will come from.
We’ll invest in education and apprenticeships. And it is outrageous that sixty-plus years after
Brown v. Board of Education, our public schools are more segregated by race and income than
they were in 1968.
We have to replace the school-to-prison pipeline with a cradle-to-college pipeline, because in
America, every child should have a good teacher and a good school, no matter what ZIP code
they live in.
And families, families need safe, affordable places to live. Black and Latino families are
disproportionately affected by the crisis of affordable housing in New York and other cities across
America. That’s forced thousands of people out of the neighborhoods where they lived for years.
Meanwhile, public housing is under enormous pressure. Over the past 15 years, federal funding
for the New York City Housing Authority has declined by nearly 30 percent.
So as part of our “Breaking Every Barrier Agenda,” we’re going to make affordable housing a
priority. We will defend and expand the current supply of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits.
We’ll boost funding for Section 8 vouchers, and give recipients more choice in deciding where to
live. And because African-American homeownership has long been one of the surest ways to
fund and build wealth, we’ll match up to $10,000 in savings for a down payment.
Now there’s one more part of this agenda – the Reverend asked me to be substantive. Well, I’m
giving it to you. Because, you know what? When somebody asks for your vote, they should tell
you what they’re going to do, not what they hope to do. And they should tell you to hold them
accountable, which I want you too. Because it is important that we do this together. I want to just
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talk very briefly about an issue that doesn’t get enough attention. That is the challenge of
environmental justice.
Now, we all know what happened in Flint. Children drinking and bathing in toxic water for nearly
two years because their governor wanted to save a little money. Parents held up bottles of brown,
murky water and said, something’s wrong here, but their concerns were dismissed and belittled.
Well, let me tell you, Flint is not alone. There are a lot of Flints across our country where children
are exposed to polluted air, unhealthy water and chemicals that can increase cancer risk.
And like Flint, they tend to be places that are home to poor people and people of color.
What happened to Flint would never have happened in a wealthy suburb of Detroit.
It is no coincidence that black children are twice as likely as white children to suffer from asthma,
three times more likely to be hospitalized, and five times more likely to die from the disease.
Or that children of color are more likely than white kids to suffer lead poisoning, which can lead
to lifelong learning challenges and even behavioral problems.
It is no coincidence that nearly half of all Latinos in the United States live in places where the air
does not even meet EPA public health standards.
Or that race is the single biggest factor determining whether you live near a toxic site, from
“asthma alley” in the Bronx to “cancer alley” in Louisiana.
And you know what – climate change is going to make these burdens even heavier.
So today, I’m announcing a new plan to fight for environmental justice across America.
When President Obama and I both were in the Senate, we worked together on legislation aimed
at getting harmful lead out of child care facilities, classrooms and homes with children. Now I
want to set an ambitious national goal to eliminate lead as a major public threat within five years.
Some say, “Well, that’s awfully ambitious.” I say, “If we put our minds to it, we can get it done.
Let’s set that goal, and then let’s get everybody moving forward to achieve it. We know how to
do the work, all we need is the will.
And let’s push polluters to pay for cleaning up hundreds of thousands of toxic sites across
America. When I was in Senate, I helped pass a law to clean up brownfields, and worked to bring
together developers, environmentalists, and local leaders from across New York to redevelop
blighted properties. Let’s take that work nationwide.
Let’s reduce air pollution and combat climate change by investing in clean energy and clean
transportation.
And oh, by the way, we’ll put a lot of people to work. As part of a major national infrastructure
strategy, let’s protect health and safety by repairing not only what we can see but what we can’t,
like the failing water systems, run-down public housing, and crumbling schools. Right now in the
Detroit public schools, there are children in classrooms breathing the toxins from mold and there
are rodents sharing their space.
And even here in New York, we know we’ve got problems. Let’s do more, like Philadelphia did,
when it installed green roofs and porous pavements to keep sewers from backing up into low
income neighborhoods.
Now you don’t have to look too far to see what this means for people. A woman named Michelle
Holmes is here with us today.
She’s lived in the Polo Grounds Towers in Harlem for decades. She does daily battle with roaches,
vermin, and other pests. And then the chemicals used to exterminate them cause other problems.
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Her family has frequent asthma attacks that often land them in the hospital. And then there’s the
mold – brown and green spots on the bathroom ceiling. No one should have to live like that in
America.
Every child and every family in America deserves clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and a
safe and healthy place to live. This a justice issue. It’s a civil rights issue. And as President, it will
be a national priority for us.
So my friends, throughout this campaign, and then as President, I’m going to keep fighting to
break down all the barriers holding back every American. My door will always be open to you.
You will always have a friend and a partner in the White House.
See, I believe that Democrats have a special obligation. If we’re going to ask African-Americans
to vote for us, we can’t take you or your vote for granted.
We can’t just show up at election time and say the right things and think that’s enough.
We can’t start building relationships a few weeks before a vote.
We have to demonstrate a sustained commitment to building opportunity, creating prosperity and
righting wrongs – not just every two or four years, not just when the cameras are on and people
are watching, but every single day. I have worked on these causes all my adult life. I’m going to
keep going at it no matter what.
And I want to close today by paying tribute to some extraordinary women who are here with us –
who inspire me every day to fight harder, work longer, and never, ever give up.
You heard their names, when Reverend Sharpton introduced them, but I’ve gotten to know some
of them personally, and have had the great honor of spending time with them.
Gwen Carr from here in New York, the mother of Eric Garner, who was stopped for selling loose
cigarettes on the street and ended up dead.
Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, shot and killed in Florida just for walking through
the development where his own father lived.
Valerie Bell, mother of Sean Bell, shot and killed by police here in New York on the morning of
his wedding day.
And Nicole Bell, his fiancee who would have married Sean that fateful day.
All these women and the others who are here, the family members of those who have been lost,
not only by police action but by gun violence of any kind, anywhere. The man who killed Trayvon
Martin should have never had a gun in the first place. All of these women and other family
members have endured unimaginable pain. I look at them and wonder whether I would have been
that strong and resilient.
Their grief is unimaginable but they have not been broken. Instead, they are channeling their
sorrow into a strategy and their mourning into a movement.
They are standing up for criminal justice reform and they are standing up against the epidemic
of gun violence that takes on average, 90 people a day. That is 33,000 people a year killed by
guns in America, every year. Now, my opponent, who will be speaking to you tomorrow, and I
don’t see this the same way. But, I think this is a national emergency and I’m going to do
everything I can to take on the gun lobby and to try to save lives, the lives of the children of
women like this and the sisters and the brothers and the daughters and the sons of so many
others.
And I will work as hard as I can as your President to keep faith with them for police reform and
demanding a criminal justice system that actually delivers justice.
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They’re living what the Scripture tells us: “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season
we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”
These are words to live by and I believe these are words to govern by. Think of the future we can
build if we work together and don’t grow weary doing good. The men on both sides of me have
not grown weary. This organization has not grown weary. It is our obligation and our challenge
not to grow weary either until every American has the dignity, the justice, and the opportunity
they deserve.
That’s the future we should want for our children and our country. That’s why I’m asking for
your support in this election, starting on the primary on Tuesday. And that’s why we will roll up
our sleeves and we will get results that will make us proud to be standing together for the kind of
future that every child in this country deserves to have. Thank you and God bless you.”
Hillary Clinton’s New York primary victory speech
Date: 20.04.2016
Thank you. Today, today you proved once again there’s no place like home. You know, in this
campaign we’ve won in every region of the country. From New York to the South to the East to
the West. But this one’s personal. New Yorkers, you’ve always—you’ve always had my back.
And I’ve always tried to have yours. Today, together, we did it again and I am deeply, deeply
grateful. I want to thank everyone who came out and voted, and to all of you across New York
who’ve known me and worked with me for so long. It is humbling that you trust me with the
awesome responsibilities that await our next president. And to all the people who supported
Senator Sanders, I believe there is much more that unites us than divides us.
You know, we started this race not far from here on Roosevelt Island. Pledging to build on the
progressive tradition that’s done so much for America, from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama.
And tonight, a little less than a year later, the race for the Democratic nomination is in the home
stretch and victory is in sight.
AUDIENCE: Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!
HILLARY CLINTON: I want to say to all of my supporters and all of the voters, you have
carried us every step of the way with passion and determination that some critics tried to dismiss.
Because of you, this campaign is the only one, Democrat or Republican, to win more than 10
million votes. I’m going forward because more voices remain to be heard, and tomorrow it’s on
to Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. We need you to be
volunteering. I hope you will join the 1.1 million people who’ve already contributed at
HillaryClinton.com—and by the way, most with less than $100—because we have more work to
do. Under the bright lights of New York, we have seen that it’s not enough to diagnose problems.
You have to explain how you have to resolve them. That’s what we have to do together for our
kids, for each other, for our country. So I want you with me to imagine a tomorrow where no
barriers hold you back, and all of our people can share in the promise of America. Imagine a
tomorrow where every parent can find a good job and every grandparent can enjoy a secure
retirement, where no child grows up in the shadow of discrimination or under the specter of
deportation, where hard work is honored, families are supported, and communities are strong, a
tomorrow where we trust and respect each other despite our differences because we’re going to
make positive differences in people’s lives. That is what this is supposed to be about, actually
helping people.
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Now, we all know—we all know many people who are still hurting. I see it everywhere I go. The
Great Recession wiped out jobs, homes, and savings, and a lot of Americans haven’t yet
recovered. But I still believe with all my heart that as another greater Democratic President once
said, there’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be cured by what’s right with America. That
is, after all, what we’ve always done. It’s who we are. America is a problem-solving nation. And
in this campaign, we are setting bold progressive goals backed up by real plans that will improve
lives, creating more good jobs that provide dignity and pride in a middle class life, raising wages
and reducing inequality, making sure all our kids get a good education no matter what zip code
they live in, building ladders of opportunity and empowerment so all of our people can go as far
as their hard work and talent will take them.
Let’s revitalize places that have been left out and left behind, from inner cities to coal country to
Indian country. And let’s put Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure,
including our failing water systems like the one in Flint, Michigan. There are many places across
our country where children and families are at risk from the water they drink and the air they
breathe. Let’s combat climate change and make America the clean energy superpower of the 21st
century. Let’s take on the challenge of systemic racism, invest in communities of color, and finally
pass comprehensive immigration reform. And once and for all, let’s guarantee equal pay for
women.
And we are going to keep our families safe and our country strong, and we’re going to defend our
rights—civil rights, voting rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights, and rights for
people with disabilities. Those are, after all, New York values, and they are American values. And
just as we did in this primary campaign, we need to stand up for them through the general election
and every day after that.
You know, it’s becoming clearer that this may be one of the most consequential elections of our
lifetimes. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are pushing a vision for America that’s divisive and
frankly dangerous, returning to trickle-down economics, opposing any increase in the minimum
wage, restricting a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions, promising to round up
millions of immigrants, threatening to ban all Muslims from entering the country, planning to
treat American Muslims like criminals. These things go against everything America stands for.
And we have a very different vision. It’s about lifting each other up, not tearing each other down.
So instead of building walls, we’re going to break down barriers. And in this campaign, I’ve seen
again our remarkable diversity and determination. This is a state and a country. A big-hearted,
open-minded, straight talking, hard-working people. Like John, the firefighter from the South
Bronx that I met shortly after 9/11 as he searched for survivors at Ground Zero, and like so many
others, John got sick breathing the toxic air. When we met again last week, he gave me a replica
of his FDNY badge and thanked me for helping our first responders get the healthcare they need.
We have to keep fighting for John and all of our firefighters and our police officers, our emergency
responders, and the construction workers who did so much.
Or Maxine. Maxine, a 27-year-old single mom from Staten Island who’s here tonight. She shared
with me how she her way out of poverty, graduated from college. Thanks in part to the help she
got for her child from the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Or Mikey, from Stuyvesant
Town, who spent—is Mikey here? Well, I’ll tell you, Mikey spent six months in Rikers for a
lowlevel drug offense, and he found out how hard it is for people who’ve done their time to find
jobs when they get out. Mikey managed to start his own ice cream shop. I took a lot of in or
[inaudible] through the media there yesterday. I highly recommend it, as you might have seen. I
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couldn’t stop myself from eating it, as soon as I had it. By the way, he made a concoction for me
called “Victory.”
But Mikey is one of the many reasons why we have to reform our criminal justice system. And
ban the box so others have a fair chance of succeeding. New Yorkers and Americans speak every
language, follow every faith, hail from every continent. Our diversity is one of our greatest
strengths in the 21st century. Not a weakness. As Robert Kennedy, whose Senate seat I was
honored to hold, once said, we are a great country, an unselfish country, and a compassionate
country. And no matter what anyone tells you, or what you might hear from others running for
president, that is still true today. America is great, and we can do great things if we do them
together. So please join us. Text “JOIN,” 47246, go to HillaryClinton.com. Be part of this
campaign.
I know how important it is that we get the campaign’s resources from people just like you, who
go in and chip in $5, $25. I am grateful to every one of you. And to the volunteers who have
worked their hearts out, to the community leaders, members of the state Senate and assembly,
county executives, mayors of cities large and small, and to the mayor of New York. Our borough
presidents, and our city council members. And to our governor, our senators, our congressional
members. And all of my friends across this wonderful state of ours, thank you. We’re going to go
up against some powerful forces that will do, say, and spend whatever it takes to stop us. But
remember, it’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get back up. And finally,
finally, let me say this.
Finally, let me say this. There is a remarkable young woman here tonight. Her name is Erica.
Erica Smegielski. She lives the truth of what I’ve been saying every day. Erica’s mother, Dawn,
was the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School. And she died trying to protect children, her
students. Erica was devastated, as any family member is, and she couldn’t imagine life without
her mom but then she got thinking. She got back up. She’d never been involved in politics before,
but she has made it her mission to advocate for common sense gun safety reform. Like the mothers
of Eric Garner, and Trayvon Martin, and so many others, Erica has turned her sorrow into a
strategy, and her mourning into a movement. It isn’t easy, but as Erica said the other day, what if
everyone who faced tough odds said, it’s hard, so I’m going to walk away? That’s not the type of
world I want to live in. Erica, it’s not the type of world we want to live in, and we refuse to live
in that.
So, my friends, that’s the spirit that makes this country great. It’s how New Yorkers pull together
and rebuild our city after the worst terrorist attack in our history. It’s how Americans worked our
way back from the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes, and it is how we’re going to break down
all the barriers holding us back. The motto of this state is “Excelsior, ever upward.” So let’s go
out and win this election.
Hillary Clinton's post-primary speech in Philadelphia
Date: 26.04.2016
Wow. Thank you, Pennsylvania! What a night. I want to thank everyone – I want to thank
everyone.
Thank you all so much. Wow. I just want to thank all of you, everyone who came out to vote here
in Pennsylvania and across Maryland and Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island. I am so grateful
to all our volunteers, our organizers, our community leaders. Everyone who worked their hearts
out.
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And I want to thank the leaders here in Pennsylvania. Thank you, Governor Wolf. Thank you,
Senator Casey. Thank you, Congressman Cartwright. And thank you so much, Mayor Kenney,
for your great help. And of course, I want to thank the 42nd President of the United States, my
husband.
Now, with your help, we’re going to come back to Philadelphia for the Democratic National
Convention with the most votes and the most pledged delegates and we will unify our party to
win this election and build an America where we can all rise together – an America where we lift
each other up instead of tearing each other down.
So we need you to keep volunteering. Keep talking to your friends and neighbors. Please join the
more than 1.1 million people who’ve already contributed at hillaryclinton.com.
I know there are still too many barriers holding too many Americans back. But despite what other
candidates say, we believe in the goodness of our people and the greatness of our nation. And if
anyone doubts that, just let them travel across this country, as I’ve done in this campaign the past
year, hearing people’s stories, learning about their struggles.
Listen to the quiet determination of the working parents I met last week in Jenkintown,
Pennsylvania. They are doing everything they can to provide opportunities to their children in an
economy where there still aren’t enough good-paying jobs.
Listen to the mothers who lost children to gun violence and encounters with the police. They’re
turning their sorrow into strategy and their mourning into a movement – a movement for justice
and dignity.
Listen to the nurse I met this weekend in New Haven, Connecticut, who worked for years to build
a middle-class life and raise a family. But then, her luck changed. She was diagnosed with breast
cancer and used up all her savings and her sick time. Soon, she was facing foreclosure and the
prospect of losing the home she’d loved for more than 20 years. And here’s what she said to me:
'My daughter and I live in fear of the day that we might come home and have a lock on the door…
We’re in pain. We’re hurting… We were, and are, the backbone of this country – the middle class.
We’re not asking for a handout. We just want to be treated fairly.'
And she is speaking for so many people across our country who feel beaten down, left out and
left behind. People who have worked hard and done their part, but just can’t seem to get ahead,
and find it tough even to get by.
Now, underneath all those worries together, we are going to come together and we are going to
solve the problems we face.
And I am aware that too many people feel at the mercy of forces too big for anyone to control,
and they just worry that those of us in politics put our own interests ahead of the national interest.
The faith that we can make things better, that we can give our kids a better future than we had, is
at the heart of who we are as a nation. And it’s one of many reasons that being American has
always been such a blessing.
And our campaign is about restoring people’s confidence in our ability to solve problems together
– by delivering results that help people follow their own dreams. That’s why we’re setting bold,
progressive goals backed up by real plans that will improve lives. After all, that is how progress
gets made. We have to be both dreamers and doers.
And as a great Democratic President once said, 'There is nothing wrong with America that can’t
be cured by what’s right with America.' I believe we can create more good jobs with rising
incomes, jobs that provide dignity, pride and a middle-class life. We can renew our democracy
by overturning Citizens United. We can lift up people and places who’ve been left out, from our
inner cities to Appalachia, in every manufacturing town hollowed out when the factory closed,
every community scarred by substance abuse, every home where a child goes to bed hungry.
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That’s what we Democrats believe in. That’s what we know is possible.
So we will build on a strong progressive tradition from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama. And
I applaud Senator Sanders and his millions of supporters for challenging us to get unaccountable
money out of our politics and giving greater emphasis to closing the gap of inequality. And I
know, together, we will get that done.
Because whether you support Senator Sanders or you support me, there’s much more that unites
us than divides us. We all agree that wages are too low and inequality is too high. That Wall Street
can never again be allowed to threaten Main Street. And we should expand Social Security, not
cut or privatize it.
We Democrats agree that college should be affordable to all and student debt shouldn’t hold
anyone back. We Democrats agree that every single American should and must have quality,
affordable health care.
We agree that our next president must keep our country safe, keep our troops out of another costly
ground war in the Middle East.
And we Democrats agree that climate change is an urgent threat. And it requires an aggressive
response that can make America the clean energy superpower of the 21st century.
And we Democrats agree on defending all of our rights – civil rights and voting rights, workers’
rights and women’s rights, LGBT rights and rights for people with disabilities.
So in this election, we will have to stand together and work hard to prevail against candidates on
the other side who would threaten all those rights and pit Americans against each other.
They would make it harder to vote, not easier. They would deny women the right to make our
own reproductive health care decisions. They would round up millions of hardworking
immigrants and deport them. They would demonize and discriminate against hardworking, terror
hating Muslim Americans who we need in the fight against radicalization. And both of the top
candidates in the Republican Party deny climate change even exits.
Now, the other day, Mr. Trump accused me of playing the, quote, ' woman card. ' Well, if fighting
for women’s health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the ' woman card, ' then
deal me in.
So, my friends, if you are a Democrat, an Independent, or a thoughtful Republican, you know
their approach is not going to build an America where we increase opportunity or decrease
inequality. So instead of letting them take us backwards, we want America to be in the future
business.
That’s why I want you to keep imagining a tomorrow where instead of building walls, we are
breaking down barriers – we are making it more likely that Americans will be part of a prosperous,
inclusive, decent society.
We’re imagining a tomorrow where every parent can find a good job and every grandparent can
enjoy a secure retirement.
We’re imagining a tomorrow where no child grows up in the shadow of discrimination or under
the specter of deportation. And where every child has a good teacher and a good school, no matter
what ZIP code that child lives in.
And imagine a tomorrow where any young person can graduate from college debt-free.
Or imagine a tomorrow where hard work is honored, families are supported, streets are safe and
communities are strong, and where love trumps hate. That is the future I want. I want that future
for my granddaughter and for all of our children and grandchildren.
Now, think of this. Our nation was born right here in Philadelphia. Our Declaration of
Independence and Constitution were signed just a few blocks away. And ever since – even through
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dark and difficult chapters of our history – the idea of America has shone through. At our best,
we are, as Robert Kennedy said, 'a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate
country.'
But America’s greatness is not a birthright. It must be earned by every generation.
So please join us. Join us. Go to hillaryclinton.com. Text JOIN, 4-7-2-4-6. Volunteer , contribute
. Let’s go forward. Let’s win the nomination and in July let’s return as a unified party. Thank you
all so much.
NEWS ARTICLES
Hillary Clinton, in Roosevelt Island Speech, Pledges to Close Income Gap
The New York Times. Date: 13. 06. 2015
Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a speech that was at times sweeping and at times policy laden,
delivered on Saturday a pointed repudiation of Republican economic policies and a populist
promise to reverse the gaping gulf between the rich and poor at her biggest campaign event to
date.
Under sunny skies and surrounded by flag-waving supporters on Roosevelt Island in New York,
Mrs. Clinton pledged to run an inclusive campaign and to create a more inclusive economy, saying
that even the new voices in the Republican Party continued to push “the top-down economic
policies that failed us before.”
“These Republicans trip over themselves promising lower taxes for the wealthy and fewer rules
for the biggest corporations without any regard on how that will make income inequality worse,”
she said before a crowd estimated at 5,500, according to the campaign.
“I’m not running for some Americans, but for all Americans,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I’m running
for all Americans.”
Offering her case for the presidency, she rested heavily on her biography. Her candidacy, she said,
was in the name of “everyone who has ever been knocked down but refused to be knocked out.”
Mrs. Clinton portrayed herself as a fighter, sounding a theme her campaign had emphasized in
recent days. “I’ve been called many things by many people, quitter is not one of them,” she said.
Standing on a platform set in the middle of a grassy memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt on the
East River island named after him, Mrs. Clinton invoked his legacy. She also praised President
Obama and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, but declared that “we face new
challenges” in the aftermath of the economic crisis.
While some Republican detractors have tried to make an issue of Mrs. Clinton’s age (if she won
she would be 69 when she took office in January 2017), she sought to embrace it and to rebut the
notion that she cannot stand for change or modernity. Offering her campaign contact information,
she spoke about the lives of gay people, saying Republicans “turn their backs on gay people who
love each other.”
In one of the biggest applause lines, she said: “I may not be the youngest candidate in this race,
but I will be the youngest woman president in the history of the United States.”
Underscoring the point with a riff on an old Beatles song, Mrs. Clinton said: “There may be some
new voices in the presidential Republican choir. But they’re all singing the same old song.”
“It’s a song called ‘Yesterday,’ ” she continued. “They believe in yesterday.”
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Allison Moore, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, called the speech
“chock-full of hypocritical attacks, partisan rhetoric and ideas from the past that led to a sluggish
economy.”
Mrs. Clinton specified policies she would push for, including universal prekindergarten, paid
family leave, equal pay for women, college affordability and incentives for companies that
provide profit-sharing to employees. She also spoke of rewriting the tax code “so it rewards hard
work at home” rather than corporations “stashing profits overseas.” She did not detail how she
would achieve those policies or address their costs.
Mrs. Clinton spoke to the criticism that her wealth makes her out of touch with middle-class
Americans, saying her candidacy is for “factory workers and food servers who stand on their feet
all day, for the nurses who work the night shift, for the truckers who drive for hours.”
Uncomfortable with the fiery rhetoric of Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat,
Mrs. Clinton offered some stark statistics to address the concerns of the Democratic Party’s
restless left. “The top 25 hedge fund managers make more than all of America’s kindergarten
teachers combined, often paying a lower tax rate,” she said.
Mrs. Clinton said many Americans must be asking, “When does my family get ahead?” She added:
“When? I say now.”
In a campaign in which Republicans have emphasized the growing threat of Islamic terrorism and
an unstable Middle East, Mrs. Clinton hardly mentioned foreign policy. She did speak of her
experience as a senator from New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“As your president, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Americans safe,” she said, weaving the
skyline and a view of the newly built One World Trade Center into her remarks.
For as much as the content of the speech mattered, the theater of it was equally important. For a
campaign criticized for lacking passion, the event gave Mrs. Clinton the ability to create a camera
ready tableau of excitement.
The Brooklyn Express Drumline revved up the crowd assembled on a narrow stretch at the
southern tip of the island. And Marlon Marshall, the campaign’s director of political engagement,
rattled off statistics about the number of volunteers who have signed up and house parties held in
the early nominating states. A section with giant screens set up for an overflow crowd stood nearly
empty.
But a crowd of supporters and volunteers from the staunchly Democratic New York area does not
exactly represent the electorate writ large. The real test for Mrs. Clinton and how the speech was
perceived will be in Iowa, where she was to travel on Saturday evening for several events. Iowa,
the first nominating state, shunned her the last time she sought the presidency, in 2008.
“I was disappointed she didn’t challenge Obama four years ago,” said Dominique Pettinato, a
24year-old parole officer who lives in Brooklyn.
For some members of the skeptical liberal wing of the Democratic Party still concerned that Mrs.
Clinton will embrace her husband’s centrist approach, the speech went only so far in convincing
them otherwise.
“This was mostly a typical Democratic speech — much better than the direction Republicans offer
America,” said Adam Green, a co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal
advocacy group. But he said the speech had not offered “the bold economic vision that most
Americans want and need.”
Mrs. Clinton did not broach one issue that liberals are increasingly frustrated by: trade. On
Thursday, Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist from Vermont who is also seeking the Democratic
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nomination, pointedly criticized Mrs. Clinton for not taking a position on a controversial trade
bill Mr. Obama is pushing, as well as other contentious issues like the proposed Keystone XL oil
pipeline and the renewal of the Patriot Act. “What is the secretary’s point of view on that?” Mr.
Sanders asked of the act, which he voted against.
Mrs. Clinton had hardly stopped speaking Saturday when Bill Hyers, a senior strategist for Martin
O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, who is also seeking the Democratic presidential
nomination, criticized her as vague on trade and other issues. Mr. O’Malley, he said, “has been
fearless and specific in the progressive agenda we need.”
If there is one demographic Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is hoping to excite it is young women. It is
an obvious connection that her 2008 campaign played down as it tried to present the former first
lady as a strong commander in chief.
But on Saturday it was clear that Mrs. Clinton will make gender more central to her campaign this
time. In her closing remarks, she called for a country “where a father can tell his daughter yes,
you can be anything you want to be, even president of the United States.”
Clinton seeks stark contrast with GOP on terrorism and national security
The Washington Post 15.12.2015
MINNEAPOLIS — Casting her Republican rivals as callow, reckless and unschooled in world
affairs, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton sought Tuesday to showcase her long
national security experience in the face of renewed fears about homegrown terror threats.
“Bluster and bigotry are not credentials” to be commander in chief, Clinton said hours ahead of a
Republican debate focused on terrorism and the security threat from the Islamic State extremist
group.
Clinton took advantage of a previously scheduled fundraising party here to use Minneapolis as a
platform from which to address the specific problem of domestic radicalization. Ten Minnesota
men have been charged with attempting to join the Islamic State, and many more are believed to
support the network based in Syria and Iraq.
Clinton took sharp issue with comments from Republican front-runner Donald Trump and his
closest challenger, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, which she characterized as dangerous taunts to Islamic
State radicals that reinforce their view that the West is at war with Islam.
“Promising to carpet-bomb until the desert glows doesn’t make you sound tough,” Clinton said
in an apparent reference to Cruz. “It makes you sound like you’re in over your head.”
Clinton met with local Muslim leaders ahead of her speech addressing terrorism and extremism
within the United States, and she called Muslim Americans our “first, last and best defense against
homegrown radicalization.”
She drew a standing ovation for urging Americans to “stand up against offensive, inflammatory,
hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric.”
Republicans accuse President Obama of being slow to recognize the threat presented by the
Islamic State and ineffectual once he did. By extension, they accuse Clinton of failing to act or
sound the alarm more forcefully when she was Obama’s first-term secretary of state.
“Her long record of failure shows she cannot be trusted to protect America from the growing
terrorist threat,” the Republican National Committee said Tuesday.
“Clinton shares Obama’s unpopular, failed strategy to combat ISIS,” the RNC said, using one of
the acronyms for the terrorist network.
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Clinton laid out what she called a “360-degree strategy” to defend against recruitment of
homegrown terrorists and to uncover plots before an attack occurs. The assault-weapon killings
of 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., this month have focused public attention on the threat
posed by radicalized attackers who could enter the United States with little scrutiny — or do not
need a visa at all — and have relatively easy access to weapons.
She called Tuesday for a reinstatement of the federal ban on assault weapons and said that the
United States should tighten its visa requirements. With limited exception, anyone who has
traveled to certain terror-prone trouble spots over the past five years should have to undergo a full
background check to obtain a U.S. visa, she said.
She offered few other specifics about how to shut down Islamic State recruitment in the United
States, prevent the flow of would-be fighters from the United States to join the Islamic State, and
enlist Muslim communities to help discover and stop plots once they form. The Obama
administration and state and local law enforcement agencies are already trying to do those things,
with mixed success.
Clinton did not recommend scrapping or overhauling any of Obama’s domestic counterterrorism
initiatives. She has recommended taking additional steps overseas, an implicit criticism that
Clinton has acknowledged but has not dwelled upon.
More than 80 percent of voters in a recent Quinnipiac University national poll said they saw it as
very likely or somewhat likely that terrorists will pull off a mass attack inside the United States
in the near future. That sense of imminent threat on the U.S. homeland was high following the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but had largely subsided.
Terrorism and national security have surpassed economic concerns as the top issue for many
Republicans this election cycle, and the topics are also a major factor behind Democratic decision
making. Clinton’s campaign is still largely organized around middle-class economic
empowerment, but she has sought to showcase her national security experience and hawkish
policy positions in the wake of the mass attacks in Paris and California.
Her speech at the University of Minnesota follows other recent remarks laying out a broad plan
to combat the Islamic State militarily and diplomatically, as well as her invitation to technology
companies to do more to weed out incitement and recruitment online.
Clinton called Trump’s proposals to suspend Muslim immigration and stop the resettlement of
Syrian refugees a rejection of the United States’ founding principles.
“This is your country, too, and I am proud to be your fellow American,” Clinton said to sustained
applause from a partisan audience that included several women in headscarves. Clinton was
introduced by former vice president Walter Mondale and accompanied by Minnesota’s two
Democratic senators.
The latest of 10 young Somali American men from the Minneapolis area charged with attempting
to join the Islamic State was arrested Dec. 9. Minneapolis is home to a large Somali expatriate
community, some of whom came to the United States as refugees.
Hillary Clinton deserves a massive amount of credit for winning Nevada
The Washington Post 20.02.2016
Yes, Hillary Clinton was way ahead in the Nevada caucuses for much of the last year. And yes,
her numbers among Latino voters in the state will furrow some brows at Clinton headquarters in
the next few days. And yes, the broader race against Bernie Sanders is far from over.
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But Hillary Clinton badly needed to win the Nevada caucuses. And she won them. Period.
Clinton has now won two of the first three 2016 votes. Both of those wins came in caucuses, a
format that, on its face, should have played into the passion gap between Sanders supporters and
Clinton backers. She is now an almost-certain winner in South Carolina's primary one week from
today and will enter the big votes March 1 and March 15 with the upper hand on Sanders. Sweep
— or come close to sweeping — the states that vote in March, and Clinton will have a close-to
insurmountable delegate edge.
It's easy to nit-pick Clinton's campaign — and I know many of her allies believe I do that on a
daily basis. But it's important to remember that, at the end of the day, there is only winning and
losing in these presidential races. If you think back to any presidential primary election, there's
(almost) always a moment — or moments — in which the outcome looks in doubt, in which the
front-runner falters.
We tend to forget those moments — George W. Bush losing New Hampshire by 19 points to John
McCain in 2000, Barack Obama losing to Clinton in New Hampshire — in the broader sweep of
history. Winners always looked like winners, and we always knew they were going to win, we
tell ourselves.
The reality is always a bit less glamorous — and makes us looks a little less smart. Grinding
victories out state by state. Organizations that find a way to drive every last supporter to the polls.
Candidates who get knocked down and find a way to get back up. Maybe two or three times.
I've come to realize that Clinton's best traits as a candidate are her resilience and her perseverance.
She will not give up. She will not stop working because she is tired. She will not back away. Ever.
Those traits were on display in Iowa and again today in Nevada. Sanders was the momentum
candidate in each of those races. Clinton had the weight of expectations anchoring her. And yet
in both instances, she found a way. Not by a lot. And maybe not exactly in the manner and style
that some of her allies — or the broader Democratic party — will love.
But she won when she needed to win.
It doesn't mean she will be the nominee. It doesn't mean the race is over. What it does mean is
that Clinton found a way when she needed to find a way. For that, she and her team deserve a
huge amount of credit.
Hillary Clinton easily defeats Bernie Sanders in South Carolina primary
The Washington Post 28.02.2016
Hillary Clinton easily defeated her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, in the Democratic primary here
Saturday, the first broad test of whether the strong challenge from Clinton’s political left has
eroded crucial support among African American voters.
With the victory in South Carolina, Clinton can claim a powerful advantage among black voters
who could determine the outcome in a half-dozen Southern states that vote next.
For Clinton, this was the first comfortable victory of a Democratic primary season that just a year
ago was supposed to be comfortable from end to end, with Clinton waltzing through as a
frontrunner.
Instead, Sanders — the senator from Vermont who calls himself a democratic socialist and has
electrified young voters and white liberals — beat Clinton handily in New Hampshire and came
unexpectedly close to beating her in Iowa and Nevada.
The victory in South Carolina will give Clinton momentum as the contest heads toward Super
Tuesday, where she and Sanders will compete in 11 states.
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A slightly hoarse Clinton came out to cheers of “Hillary! Hillary!” in a room full of jubilant
supporters in Columbia.
“Today, you sent a message: In America, when we stand together, there is no barrier too big to
break,” Clinton said. Acknowledging that South Carolina was the end of the one-state-at-a-time
early phase of this campaign, she exclaimed: “Tomorrow, this campaign goes national!”
Exit polls reported by ABC News showed that Clinton’s advantage with black voters was, indeed,
decisive: Black voters accounted for about 6 in 10 of Saturday’s Democratic electorate, and an
overwhelming 8 in 10 of those black voters supported Clinton.
That would set a record. The previous record was 55 percent, set in 2008 as then-Sen. Barack
Obama campaigned — against Clinton herself — to become his party’s first African American
nominee.
Minutes after the polls closed, Clinton changed her Twitter profile picture to a poster-style
drawing of her with the words “Thank You South Carolina.”
Sanders was in the air when the race was called for Clinton, flying from one campaign stop in
Texas to another in Minnesota.
“In politics, on a given night, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Tonight we lost,” Sanders
told reporters after getting off his chartered jet in Rochester, Minn., where he was staging an
evening rally. “I congratulate Secretary Clinton on her very strong victory. Tuesday, over 800
delegates are at stake, and we intend to win many, many of them.”
He did not take questions before getting in his car.
Sanders has won only one of the four initial contests, where candidates typically focus the greatest
attention and resources. But he has captured young voters in astonishing numbers and is raising
more money than Clinton, ensuring that he will remain in the race — and remain a threat to the
front-runner.
Sanders was already looking ahead to states that vote on March 1, Super Tuesday. His campaign
has said it has a good shot of winning five of the 11 Democratic state contests that day.
He spent much of the last few days before Saturday’s vote campaigning in Super Tuesday states,
and although he began the day in South Carolina, he left in the morning and never returned.
Clinton spent most of the last week in South Carolina, leaving only for brief stops in Super
Tuesday states including Texas and Georgia.
A thousand miles from South Carolina in Austin on Saturday, more than 10,000 adoring Sanders
supporters showed up and cheered his every sentence at an outdoor rally. He had plenty to say
about elections — just not the one taking place Saturday.
He recounted his near tie in the Iowa caucuses, his big win in the New Hampshire primary and
his come-from-behind five-percentage-point loss in Nevada.
“And now we come to Super Tuesday!” Sanders said, skipping over South Carolina’s place on
the calendar.
Sanders could not make much headway against Clinton’s long ties and enduring loyalty among
many black voters here. He had hoped to do well enough to claim he had dented Clinton’s
“firewall” of Southern states, which Clinton allies have claimed would put an end to Sanders’s
early momentum from liberal, majority-white states.
But unlike in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Clinton’s once-impressive double-digit lead
over Sanders never faltered much in South Carolina. With nearly all precincts reporting, Clinton
was beating him by nearly 50 percentage points — by far the largest margin for any victory so far
this year.
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Clinton sent surrogates including Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) — the top-ranking black
Democrat in the House — to polling places to make one last pitch. In many places, it seemed that
the voters didn’t need it: Black voters, especially, praised her long experience in Washington.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in the last eight years, and Hillary is the best person out there to
continue the progress,” said Al Tucker, a 67-year-old African American in Columbia, the state
capital. “You look at South Carolina, and we’re at the bottom in anything you can think of:
education, poverty. I think Hillary would be good because she’s going to look out for us.”
A majority of black voters this time said they saw Clinton as trustworthy and honest — a marked
change from New Hampshire, where she lost badly amid voter concerns about her honesty.
The same exit polls showed that Sanders had vastly beaten Clinton among white voters younger
than 45, but there were many fewer of these voters in the South Carolina primary than in other
early states. Additionally, according to ABC News, Clinton dominated in a demographic that
Sanders had hoped to win in this state: black voters younger than 45. Clinton won that group by
3 to 1. Clinton won by a narrow margin whites who were 45 and older, and she won nearly all of
the vote among blacks 45 and older, according to ABC News.
In recent weeks, Clinton has largely shifted her focus away from the Republican race toward the
threat that Sanders poses to her in the Democratic primary season. But on Saturday, Clinton
reiterated her criticism of the rhetoric of Republican front-runner Donald Trump, particularly
toward Muslim Americans.
During a stop in Birmingham, Ala., the former secretary of state took an implicit swipe at Trump.
“When you run for president, it’s not just Americans who pay attention. And when you are
president the entire world listens to every word you say. Markets rise and fall,” Clinton said. “You
do have to be careful about what you say and how you say it.”
Exit polls reported by ABC News also showed that a large majority of Democratic voters, fully 7
in 10, wanted the next president to continue Obama’s policies, rather than pursue a more liberal
agenda. Sanders has called for a “political revolution” that would enact sweeping liberal policies
— including universal, government-run health insurance — beyond what Obama has put in place.
Sanders began showing up in the state in 2014, long before he announced a run for president, said
South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison. He ended up with about 200 staff
and 11 offices in the state, and his campaign spent roughly $1.7 million on television and radio
advertising in the state.
Clinton relied on decades of relationships between her family and black leaders here. Supporters
at her rallies and other public events last week were largely older African Americans. Many of
those same supporters had spurned Clinton in 2008 to support then-rival Obama.
Some of those South Carolina voters had a falling out with the Clintons, who were accused of
using racially tinged rhetoric to disparage Obama’s candidacy eight years ago. But both Hillary
and former president Bill Clinton were redeemed with stalwart black support this time around.
Among those supporters was Bernice Scott, 71, who was up early Saturday morning, heading to
the small towns around Richland County, where she has lived for nearly 50 years, to help get out
the vote for Clinton. As one of the first African Americans to serve on the county council, Scott
is well-known and well-respected, a leader of a network of grass-roots activists known as the
“Reckoning Crew.”
“Because if you don’t do right, you will have to reckon with us,” Scott said.
“And we are a force to be reckoned with,” adds her friend and fellow crew member, Jackie Brown.
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Phillip reported from Columbia, Birmingham, Ala., and Charleston. Wagner reported from
Columbia, Austin, Grand Prairie, Tex., and Rochester, Minn. Gearan reported from Washington.
David A. Fahrenthold and Vanessa Williams in Washington and Hannah Jeffrey in Columbia
contributed to this report.
Clinton's Southern sweep gives her commanding lead; Sanders vows to continue
Los Angeles Times
02. 03. 2016
Hillary Clinton emerged from Super Tuesday having regained the mantle of prohibitive
frontrunner, decisively winning the biggest and most important states in an election that confirmed
her overwhelming support from minority voters and left her rival with no clear opening to catch
her.
Clinton appeared likely to rack up twice as many delegates from Tuesday’s contests as Sen. Bernie
Sanders of Vermont, as she swept through the South with crushing victories in delegaterich states
including Georgia, Virginia and Texas. She also won a narrow victory in Massachusetts.
Along the way, she won more than 8 in 10 African American voters taking part in Democratic
primaries, as well as two-thirds of Democratic Latino voters in Texas and a majority of white
voters in at least six of the 11 states holding Democratic nominating contests.
Her double-digit margins of victory in state after state, including Tennessee, Alabama and her
former home state of Arkansas, moved the race into a new phase in which she can focus on
attacking Republican front-runner Donald Trump rather than tangling with Sanders, the 74yearold democratic socialist whose earnest campaign has embarrassed her political machine at
several turns.
As expected, Sanders won his home state of Vermont. He also prevailed in Oklahoma and in
caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota, according to early returns and exit polls.
Sanders vowed to keep fighting all the way to the Democratic convention this summer in
Philadelphia.
Clinton, however, largely ignored Sanders as she spoke to supporters in Miami, where early voting
already has begun ahead of Florida's March 15 primary. Instead, she aimed her verbal barbs at
Trump.
“The stakes of this election have never been higher. The rhetoric we're hearing on the other side
has never been lower,” she said. “Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong and
we are not going to let it work. Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together.”
The speech reflected the impact Sanders has had on the race, even as Clinton starts to build a lead
over him that is looking increasingly insurmountable. When she remarked on the greed of some
of the wealthiest corporations and individuals, the need to nominate an unabashed progressive to
the Supreme Court, or the urgency of global warming, it was as if she were channeling the
Vermonter, who has continued to outperform Clinton with some groups of voters, particularly
those younger than 30.
Clinton also focused her remarks heavily on the rights of immigrants and on racial injustice,
particularly as she sees it playing out in the polluted drinking water coming out of taps in homes
of the largely African American community of Flint, Mich. Her speech reflected the identity
politics she has mastered over decades of working with minority communities. Sanders has
struggled to make such connections despite his early activism in the civil rights movement.
But Sanders, speaking to supporters in Vermont, said he was not going anywhere. He
noted that even after Tuesday night, 35 states had yet to vote.
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“Let me assure you that we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for
environmental sanity, for a world of peace to every one of those states,” he said.
“This campaign is not just about electing a president,” Sanders said. “It is about transforming
America. It is about making America the great nation that we know it has the potential to be.”
Despite a determined effort, Sanders has been unable to expand his support much beyond the
white, liberal voters who began flocking to him last fall. In a Democratic contest, that’s an
unsustainable position. More than 40% of the Democratic turnout Tuesday was projected to be
nonwhite voters.
“You can't win the nomination writing off the most diverse states,” said Brian Fallon, Clinton’s
press secretary. “That's the lesson from tonight.”
Democrats who voted Tuesday also were not looking for an outsider, according to exit polling.
While Sanders has relentlessly and derisively tagged Clinton as an “establishment” politician,
more than 8 in 10 voters said they preferred a candidate with deep experience over an outsider.
Houston lawyer Keith Hampton, 61, voted for Clinton on Tuesday, as did his 25-year-old daughter
in Dallas. He said his 30-year-old son, a chef, backed Bernie Sanders.
“He says he’s going to get better benefits, raise the minimum age and address student loans,”
Hampton said as he stood outside his polling place at a church in the heart of Houston’s liberal
Montrose neighborhood near two Sanders signs.
But Hampton’s reasoning was simple: “Hillary can win. I don’t think Bernie can.”
Jimmy Grossman, 39, works in corporate sales and said he, too, voted for Clinton.
“I don’t believe much of what Bernie says,” said Grossman, who has always liked the Clintons.
He listened to an interview with Sanders recently and thought, “How are they going to accomplish
this? It’s funny young people are so influenced by this.”
“We need a woman,” Grossman added.
Even without counting her support from super-delegates — Democratic Party leaders and elected
officials who can vote at the convention for whichever candidate they want — Clinton has pulled
so far ahead of Sanders that he would have to win more than 60% of the delegates still up for
grabs to get the nomination. Because the Democrats award delegates proportionately to each
candidate’s vote, Sanders would need huge victories in most of the remaining states to achieve
that.
Once a candidate falls behind, catching up is extremely hard, because even in a landslide both
candidates receive delegates. Clinton learned that lesson eight years ago when she was the trailing
candidate, trying unsuccessfully to catch then-Sen. Barack Obama. Now, she seems likely to be
on the winning side of the equation.
Even so, Clinton won’t be in position to clinch the nomination for months. Those same
proportional delegate rules mean that getting to a majority takes time.
Clinton’s path to dominating the Democratic race was set in place by a victory in South Carolina
on Saturday, following the same pattern that Obama followed eight years ago. Similarly, in 1992,
Bill Clinton used an impressive victory in South Carolina as a springboard that put him on the
path to the nomination. In both cases, however, the candidates did not mathematically clinch the
nomination until June. Hillary Clinton now seems poised to replicate their experience.
Sanders remains popular in some Northern and Western states, some of which voted
Tuesday. He spent considerable time in the last week in Minnesota, whose mostly white electorate
has a long tradition of backing progressives, including former Vice President Walter F. Mondale
and the late Paul Wellstone, who both represented the state in the U.S. Senate.
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The Vermonter has run a strong campaign so far, exceeding most expectations. But it was always
built on the strategy of a big win in one of the early states that would propel him into contention
in parts of the country where few voters had even heard of him until recently.
Sanders got one early win in New Hampshire, where he tapped into disenchantment with what he
calls the nation’s “rigged economy” and excitement about the plan for free public college that
Clinton ridicules. Yet even the 22-percentage-point victory Sanders achieved in New Hampshire
has proven insufficient to overcome the huge advantages Clinton has in organizing, name
recognition and endorsements in key states.
Sanders poured extensive resources into the battle against Clinton in Nevada, but fell short. Since
his loss in South Carolina on Saturday, he has in some ways been acting more like a candidate
vying for a prominent speaking spot at the Democratic convention than one hoping to win the
nomination. His spending on advertising over the last two weeks suggested he had all but given
up in states such as Texas, Virginia and Georgia.
Yet Sanders still runs ahead of Clinton in recent fundraising, with his campaign bringing in an
eye-popping $42 million in the month of February alone. Even if he trails far behind in the
delegate count, that money would allow his campaign to continue through the end of the primary
season, in June, when California votes.
Almost all of his money has come from small donors, who have made a record-setting 4 million
contributions over the course of his campaign.
“That is more contributions — more contributions than any candidate in the history of this
country, up until this point,” Sanders said in Minnesota over the weekend. “And do you know
what that average contribution is?”
The audience shouted back a number that is well-known to Sanders supporters: “Twenty-seven
dollars!”
Said Sanders: “With such a brilliant audience here, there’s no way we’re going to lose Minnesota.”
Hillary Clinton Wins 4 Races, Rebounding from Michigan Loss
The New York Times 15. 03.2016
Hillary Clinton swept major primaries in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio on Tuesday,
rebounding from her upset loss to Bernie Sanders in Michigan a week earlier and securing a
political and psychological victory for her campaign.
The results were a significant setback for Mr. Sanders, who was counting on his fiery arguments
against free trade to help him prevail across the industrial Midwest. He spent heavily trying to
win Ohio, as well as Tuesday’s contests in Illinois and Missouri, but he came away with his
presidential bid looking increasingly hopeless, since Mrs. Clinton is far ahead in amassing
delegates needed to win the nomination.
Early Wednesday, The Associated Press declared Mrs. Clinton the winner in Illinois, too. Votes
were still being counted in Missouri.
For Mrs. Clinton, Tuesday’s double-digit victories netted her so many delegates that her lead over
Mr. Sanders is now about three times what Barack Obama’s was over her in 2008. On a personal
level, too, she and her advisers were reassured that regardless of her Michigan defeat, her political
arguments about jobs and the economy had potency in states that will be major battlegrounds in
November.
The top issue for Ohio Democratic primary voters was the economy, and most of them favored
Mrs. Clinton. A majority of voters also said that trade with other nations takes away American
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jobs, and more than half of them supported Mrs. Clinton. In Michigan, Mr. Sanders captured this
group by double digits.
Mrs. Clinton was bullish and beaming at her victory party in West Palm Beach, Fla., after the first
three states were called in her favor. “We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party
nomination and winning this election in November,” she said to cheers from a rowdy crowd of
1,300 people.
More than in any other primary night speech, Mrs. Clinton aimed her remarks in South Florida at
the leading Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, who boasted of his own victory just miles
away.
“When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all
Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong
— it makes him wrong,” Mrs. Clinton said, as she called on all Americans to fight against “bluster
and bigotry.”
Mr. Sanders, speaking at a campaign event in Arizona, which holds its contest next week, stuck
to his scathing assessment of the American economic system and promised to overhaul campaign
finance rules. He criticized Walmart as not paying living wages, but also repeated his creed against
global trade that has particularly hit the Midwestern industrial belt.
“I say to corporate America, you want us to buy your products, start manufacturing those products
here in America, not in China,” Mr. Sanders said.
Mr. Sanders also used the evening to criticize Mrs. Clinton for having a “super PAC” and relying
on large donations. “She has received money from the drug companies and the fossil fuel
industry,” he said to loud hisses and boos from the crowd of 7,200 people. “She has given speeches
on Wall Street for $225,000 a pop.”
Ohio was the prize that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders coveted the most, a bellwether state in
American politics that would bestow not only delegates but also a new political story line for the
winner: a Clinton comeback or a Sanders surge, given that he was a long-shot there until recently.
After her loss in Michigan — and Mr. Sanders’s persistent criticism of her record on global trade
— Mrs. Clinton’s aides seemed exasperated that her detailed policy positions to bring jobs back
to the hard-hit Midwestern states were a harder sell than what they said were the unrealistic
promises offered by her opponent. They huddled to retool her economic pitch so that it resonated
better in Midwestern states in hopes of competing more strongly with Mr. Sanders.
“After having lost Michigan, we came into, particularly, Ohio with a renovated plan,” said her
spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri.
At a rally in Youngstown, Mrs. Clinton addressed union members packed onto a factory floor at
M7 Technologies, reminding them of the work she had done as a senator from New York to bring
jobs back to the depressed upstate areas.
“I stood up for our companies in New York,” she said. “I will stand up for our companies in Ohio
and across America,” Mrs. Clinton said. “It’s exciting for me. I am really totally committed to
bringing back manufacturing.”
The Clinton campaign dispatched former President Bill Clinton to Akron and Toledo, two
predominantly white working-class cities that Mr. Sanders also campaigned in. Mrs. Clinton also
racked up delegates in heavily black areas of Ohio, including courting voters in Cleveland.
Mrs. Clinton’s victories in Florida and North Carolina were due in large part to minorities: black
voters in both states, and Hispanics in Florida as well. The Sanders campaign had been expecting
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to lose Florida, given that only Democrats could participate in the primary and he tends to perform
better when independents are in the mix. But Mrs. Clinton was also broadly popular in the state,
which was reflected in exit polls by Edison Research.
Mrs. Clinton drew support from about seven in 10 Hispanic voters and nearly eight in 10 black
voters. She was backed by a slim majority of white voters, who accounted for about half of the
electorate — down from two-thirds in 2008. She was favored by voters who put a high priority
on experience or electability, and she was the solid choice when voters were asked who had the
better chance of defeating Mr. Trump in November.
In Ohio exit polls, Mrs. Clinton was far ahead among black voters, but she and Mr. Sanders ran
closely among white voters. As in Michigan, Mr. Sanders was drawing huge support from
independents and voters under age 30, while Mrs. Clinton was popular with Democrats and voters
over 45.
As Ohioans streamed to the polls on Tuesday, several voters described intense feelings for their
favored candidates. At the Alliance Church in Reynoldsburg, a middle-class Columbus suburb,
Sediena Barry, who installs office equipment, said she decided to vote for Bernie Sanders
moments before facing the horseshoe of electronic voting machines.
“Young people were told, get an education and work hard and you’ll get ahead, and none of us
are,” said Ms. Barry, 34, who complained that she is taxed at a rate higher rate than bosses who
make a half-million dollars a year.
James Moore, a restaurant manager, said he voted for Mrs. Clinton “for my personal future and
my family’s future.” He added: “All her ideals line up with what we want to happen.”
For both candidates, Tuesday’s primary results represented a major turning point in the race:
Roughly half of the 4,765 Democratic pledged delegates have now been awarded. But their
campaigns offered sharply different takes.
Clinton advisers noted that Mr. Sanders had reached the halfway mark without showing any
progress at narrowing her sizable lead in delegates, leaving him only one way forward — to win
a series of landslides through the June primaries and pick up significantly more delegates than
Mrs. Clinton.
That situation is highly unlikely, and Clinton advisers made it clear on Tuesday that they were
confident about holding the delegate lead and ready to focus toward the general election. “We
think she will be the nominee, we’d like for this process to obviously be resolved as quickly as it
can, but that’s ultimately not up to us and we’re prepared for it to go on,” Ms. Palmieri said as the
voting was underway.
Sanders advisers, while acknowledging they were far behind in the delegate count, said that the
race was now shifting to their advantage and that they expected to win more delegates than Mrs.
Clinton in the coming primaries and caucuses. They argued that Mrs. Clinton’s best states were
behind her — the primaries across the South and in Texas where her popularity among blacks and
Hispanics resulted in troves of delegates.
Looking ahead, Sanders advisers predicted success in states with large liberal populations, like
Wisconsin and California, and those with caucuses, a format that rewards voter enthusiasm and
turnout and has favored Mr. Sanders recently. Mr. Sanders has even talked about prevailing in
New York, Mrs. Clinton’s home state, given the high numbers of progressive voters and working
class Democrats who share his disgust with Wall Street.
“We’re now entering a period where we think we’ll win most if not all of the contests before the
April 19 primary in New York,” said Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Mr. Sanders. “Regardless
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of how much momentum we have after Tuesday, the calendar is shifting in our favor. Now we
just have to win some major showdowns, like in New York and New Jersey, to raise questions
about whether she can really win the presidency.”
Mrs. Clinton prevailed in Ohio in 2008 against Mr. Obama and referred to that victory frequently
during their campaign, arguing that the Democrats’ best hope in any general election was the
winner of that state’s primary.
”It’s a state that knows how to pick a president,” Mrs. Clinton said at her victory rally in Columbus
in 2008. “And no candidate in recent history, Democrat or Republican, has won the White House
without winning the Ohio primary.”
Mr. Obama, of course, did go on to win the general election — and Ohio — that November. But
after Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton is optimistic once again that her adage will prove true.
Hillary Clinton challenges Donald Trump over 'dangerously wrong' views on Israel
Los Angeles Times 21. 03. 2016
Donald Trump's stated willingness to enter Mideast peace talks from a position of neutrality make
him unfit to be commander in chief, Hillary Clinton told a major pro-Israel group Monday.
Speaking from the same stage where Trump, the Republican front-runner, will address the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee later Monday in Washington, Clinton alluded to a
number of Trump's broad pronouncements on foreign policy and especially the U.S. relationship
with Israel.
Clinton, the former secretary of State, questioned Trump's temperament as much as his overall
foreign policy vision — or lack thereof. She warned against isolationist tendencies of Trump and
others in the GOP.
“Candidates for president who think the United States can outsource Middle East security to
dictators or that America no longer has vital national interests at stake in the region are
dangerously wrong,” she said, adding that it would be a "serious mistake" for the U.S. to "cede
the mantle of leadership for global peace and security to anyone else."
"Yes, we need steady hands, not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on
Tuesday, and who knows what on Wednesday, because everything's negotiable," she said.
"Some things aren't negotiable," she added later. "And anyone who doesn't understand that has no
business being our president."
Trump's precise views on foreign policy are, indeed, something of a moving target. In a recent
Republican debate, Trump asserted that he was the most pro-Israel candidate but said he would
enter negotiations between Israel and Palestinians, framing himself as "somewhat neutral" in
hopes of reaching a peace deal.
Clinton reiterated her support for a two-state solution, saying that Palestinians "should be able to
live and govern themselves," even as she seemed to share Israel's doubts that "a willing and
capable partner for peace even exists."
Clinton said one of her first acts as president would be to invite the Israeli prime minister to the
White House. She downplayed the tensions between President Obama and Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, but said it was time to take the U.S.-Israel relationship to "the next level."
She highlighted her role in building sanctions against Iran that paved the way for the historic
nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers — an Obama initiative that she said has
made Israel, the United States and the world safer, and one she would vigorously enforce.
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"There's a big difference between talking about holding Tehran accountable and actually doing
it," she said. "Our next president has to be able to hold together our global coalition and impose
real consequences for even the smallest violations."
As Trump prepares to meet with some Republican lawmakers in Washington on Monday, Clinton
closed with something of a challenge to the GOP as its leaders come to grips with the possibility
that he will indeed lead the party ticket this fall.
Alluding to the caustic tone of the campaign, she said America has seen "dark chapters before."
"But America should be better than this. And I believe it's our responsibility as citizens to say so,"
she said. "If you see bigotry, oppose it. If you see violence, condemn it. If you see a bully, stand
up to him."
What Needs to Come After the New York Primary
The New York Times 15.04. 2016
Barring another Michigan-style upset, Hillary Clinton is likely to win the New York presidential
primary on Tuesday. But watching her and Bernie Sanders wage the Battle of Brooklyn on the
debate stage on Thursday was to hear two candidates recycling familiar themes, albeit at a higher
pitch, and to see the toll that these fractious months of combat have exacted on them and their
party. Democrats are now so divided and dug-in that no matter who wins the nomination, it will
take a considerable effort to heal and reunite them.
Of the two, Mrs. Clinton has consistently advanced the more workable, detailed ideas on domestic
and foreign policy. On taxes, wages, education and health care, on dealing with traditional
alliances and with threats to the United States from abroad, hers is a pragmatic approach that
accepts the messy details of governance and envisions the challenges of getting an agenda passed,
not just fought over, in Congress.
Mr. Sanders’s calls for social justice are inspiring; his long-held concerns for the working poor,
for immigrants and for young people struggling to pay for college are real. His reliance on small
individual contributions and his refusal to take money from “super PACs” is a model of ethical
campaigning.
But Mr. Sanders has yet to offer any firm plan for translating his ideas for universal health care,
free public college and reining in the big banks into workable legislation at a time when
Republicans dominate both houses of Congress.
Mrs. Clinton holds many, though not all, of the same views as Mr. Sanders. They differ
considerably on foreign policy; she is more hawkish on Syria and she initially supported the Iraq
War.
However, on some issues, her reluctance to illuminate her thinking is mystifying. She cheers states
like New York that have raised their minimum wage to $15 an hour, as Mr. Sanders wants to do
nationally. But she favors a national minimum of only $12, not $15. Why? Her explanation is that
a $15 wage could hurt workers in places where wages are generally lower and that the matter
should be left to local governments. This contorted position makes her vulnerable to accusations
that she’s less than passionate about meeting the needs of low-income families or is being
pressured by special interests on the issue.
Too often, Mrs. Clinton appears defensive in answering legitimate inquiries, for which she should
have sound answers. This tendency has led to some errors and has prevented her from correcting
others. Her decision to use a private server for her government emails was a lapse in judgment
that she has yet to explain convincingly. Criticism of her lucrative speeches to Wall Street is also
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legitimate. She could easily deprive Mr. Sanders of one of his strongest points if she simply
released the transcripts, instead of concocting absurd reasons not to.
The breadth of experience that Mrs. Clinton — former first lady, senator from New York and
secretary of state — would bring to the presidency is impressive and rare. But as tough as this
long fight with Mr. Sanders has been, a tougher challenge could lie ahead: appealing to younger
Democrats and resolving doubts about her forthrightness and her policies. She will need to do
both if she is to stake a clear claim to the White House.
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